The Virtual Beings Summit drew hundreds to Fort Mason in San Francisco.
The Virtual Beings Summit drew hundreds to Fort Mason in San Francisco.
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The DeanBeat: The inspiring possibilities and sobering realities of making virtual beings

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

I had the pleasure of attending the first-ever Virtual Beings Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, where I met real people talking about making virtual characters driven by artificial intelligence.

It felt like I was witnessing the dawn of a new industry. I know that the idea of making a virtual human or animal has been around for a long time, but Edward Saatchi, the CEO of AI-powered virtual being company Fable Studios, gathered a diverse group of people from across disciplines and international borders to speak at the conference, as if they all had the same mission. To be there at the beginning.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.