This Digital Picture Frame Wants to Bring People Closer to a Holographic Future

Holograms are a pillar of science fiction, emerging across the great expanses of Star Wars, Star Trek, HaloAnd The extent. If a story takes place in the future or in space, it probably contains a hologram. Unfortunately, this is less the case in real life, despite the fact that many tech companies are keen to make holograms a reality.

The latest effort to bring a holographic device to our world comes from Looking Glass, a Brooklyn-based company that has been dabbling in 3D holographic displays for nearly a decade. Today, the company announced the Musubi, a consumer-facing digital photo frame.

Courtesy of Looking Glass

Upload any image or video, and Musubi uses artificial intelligence to extract the most important part and place it in space as a 3D image in the frame. It could be a video of a child’s first steps or a snapshot of a birthday party. (Or, as one of Looking Glass’s examples, a cat exposing its asshole.) The image will be displayed in 3D form, viewable in all its holographic glory across nearly 170 degrees.

“Our goal is to make holograms accessible to everyone,” says Shawn Frayne, CEO of Looking Glass. “In a way, this is as close as you can get to the science fiction dream.”

The Musubi is a far cry from anything like the hologram-adjacent Ava AI that gaming company Razer announced at CES this year and revealed more details this week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Razer’s offering is an AI chatbot character that floats in a 3D tube that you can put on your desk. The company touts it as a “Friend for Life” that can step in while you play or help you organize tasks in your daily life. (Yes, it looks like a cute anime girl, but there are other characters.)

The Musubi is a 7-inch photo and video frame. No Wi-Fi connection required, no apps, no on-device cameras, and no subscription services to make it work. The actual processing required to turn an image or video into a hologram is done in a program on a PC or MacBook, included free of charge by Looking Glass. Once the images are edited, you can add them to the device via a USB-C cable; the Musubi can store up to 1,000 images. (Videos take up more space, but are limited to 30-second clips.) The Musubi can be plugged into a wall outlet and has a built-in rechargeable battery that lasts up to three hours.