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title: "How AI and VR are colliding to create change in training"
description: "Where AI and VR intersect today, from gaming and medical technology to education and training, and how an AI conversation partner in VR could support practice."
canonical: https://peopletechrevolution.com/news/how-ai-and-vr-are-colliding
---

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[News](https://peopletechrevolution.com/news) · September 2023

# How AI and VR Are Colliding to Create Change

Artificial intelligence is already working alongside virtual reality in gaming, medicine, education and training, and the two are converging fastest in one place: a conversation partner who listens and answers back.

## VR and AI, in one experience

AI is the ability of machines to make sense of information and respond to it. VR is the creation of a computer-built environment a person can stand inside.

Put together, AI makes a VR experience more responsive, and VR gives AI a place, rather than a screen, to respond in.

Both change how people take in and act on information: VR by building a space you can stand in, AI by making sense of far more data than a person can hold at once.

### Where AI and VR are already meeting

Entertainment, training and therapy each have a room where a character now answers back, and these are those rooms.

Games and entertainment. A character that understands what a player does, not just a fixed script, changes how a scene plays out.

Training and education. AI can read how a learner is doing and change the pace or the questions in response, in a VR classroom or scenario.

Therapeutic practice. A controlled VR scenario with an AI-driven conversation partner can support exposure and rehearsal work, with a clinician monitoring the session.

Design visualisation. AI can help shape a design from a description, then VR or mixed reality lets people walk it and judge it before anything is built.

Remote collaboration. An AI-driven presence that understands language, tone and gesture makes a remote check-in feel closer to being in the room.

Making sense of data. AI can turn a large body of information into a diagram a facilitator can walk a group through, on a whiteboard or inside a VR room.

### A conversation partner that talks back

At People Tech Revolution, an AI-driven character inside VR opens up practice for the conversations people find hardest.

Feedback practice. Practising a piece of feedback, constructive or positive, and hearing how it lands before delivering it for real.

Presentation practice. A safe run at a presentation, more than once, with a response to react to each time.

Difficult conversations. A hard conversation with a colleague or a client, rehearsed with a character that answers differently each time.

Language practice. Natural back-and-forth conversation practice, with a correction or a suggestion offered in the moment.

Roleplay and negotiation. A character can be set up as a colleague or a client, so a negotiation or a conflict gets rehearsed before it happens for real.

Adapting the practice. The tone and manner of the conversation partner can be set to match a real colleague or client, so someone can practise adapting their own approach.

## What has to come first

The potential is wide, and so is the responsibility. Privacy, security, inclusive design and unbiased AI have to be the priority as the two technologies come together, not an afterthought once something ships.

See how these ideas have developed into current PTR work on the [AI page](https://peopletechrevolution.com/ai), or read about [AI roleplay practice](https://peopletechrevolution.com/ai/ai-roleplay-practice).

Update, August 2026. This article was first published in September 2023.

Since then, the AI-and-VR conversation partner described above has become a live PTR capability. PTR now offers [AI roleplay practice](https://peopletechrevolution.com/ai/ai-roleplay-practice), [custom AI experiences](https://peopletechrevolution.com/ai/custom-ai-experiences) and [digital twins](https://peopletechrevolution.com/ai/digital-twins).

Want to see where AI and VR have landed since this was written?

[Open the contact form](https://peopletechrevolution.com/news/how-ai-and-vr-are-colliding#contact)
Ask our CEO Simon Lowe’s Digital Twin a question

## Related PTR work

Where this idea lives on the current site, and the other articles that trace how it developed.

[AI roleplay practice. The live version of the AI conversation partner idea, ready to rehearse a real scenario.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/ai/ai-roleplay-practice)[Digital twins. A twin that holds a conversation on screen, by voice, or in a booked call.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/ai/digital-twins)[XR overview. Virtual, augmented and mixed reality builds, and the headsets they run on.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr)[How VR training can boost DEI efforts. Where the practice-based case for VR in DEI training comes from.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/news/vr-training-dei)[Collaborate remotely with VR. How the same convergence changes distributed and hybrid teams.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/news/collaborate-remotely-with-vr)[Embracing XR and VR horizons. What a new generation of headsets means for this kind of convergence.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/news/embracing-xr-horizons)