You hear that sound? That’s the sound of augmented reality (AR) fading away as a driving concept in technology.
You could blame Apple, which handed down an edict to Apple Vision Pro developers: “Refer to your app as a spatial computing app. Don’t describe your app experience as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), extended reality (XR), or mixed reality (MR).”
But blaming Apple would be wrong. Instead, blame artificial intelligence (AI) — specifically the generative AI (genAI) trend of the past year and a half; it’s completely upended and re-directed the purpose and function of the glasses formerly known as AR glasses.