Edward Saatchi at the first Virtual Beings Summit in San Francisco.
Edward Saatchi at the first Virtual Beings Summit in San Francisco on July 24, 2019.
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Virtual Beings Summit LA to highlight Hollywood’s view of artificial people

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

The Virtual Beings Summit posits that artificial intelligence is the next great art form. It explores how AI and entertainment will give birth to virtual beings, avatars, agents, assistants, and virtual influencers.

The first Virtual Beings Summit took place in July in San Francisco, and it had a decidedly technology-oriented focus, said Edward Saatchi, co-creator of the conference and CEO of Fable Studios, in an interview with VentureBeat. The Los Angeles version of the summit takes place on November 19 at the United Talent Agency in Beverly Hills, California, and this event is more about entertainment, Saatchi told me. The summit also named the winners of its first Virtual Beings grants, which are listed below.

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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.