Wagner James Au / New World Notes

What you’re watching above is a Second Life birthday / nightclub party for Emily Silkstone, but also one of the coolest combinations of gen AI and the virtual world I’ve seen so far. She converted her club, Basilica, into a kind of self-contained Second Life bubble that floats through the real world, to the shock and surprise of people gazing inside. But adding another layer of virtual to the experience, most of the people in the real world are actually AI-generated.

“There’s a green sphere around the club,” she tells me, explaining how she did it, “so I streamed with an alt and she just de-rendered the club. So she only saw the dance floor and a green screen. In OBS, I replaced the green screen with the footage of the RL people. The people watching the avies are AI-rendered in Veo3 from Google.”

She also incorporated stock footage which is meant to ironically reflect Second Life culture:

“The real life video showed the things we do in SL too, shopping, partying and, bit of kinky stuff,” she adds, laughing. “So the concept was: humans looking at avatars, but also avatars looking at humans.”

But wait, there’s yet another layer of recursion to the experience:

“The live stream was also streamed back into the club, so the people in the club saw themselves surrounded by the humans on a big screen behind the DJ.”

In other words: These are avatars controlled by humans watching simulated humans watch them, while also watching themselves being watched by simulated humans. If that makes sense.

And so what Emily Silkstone created was both a raging party and a collective art experience:

“Second Life means many things to me. Sure, organizing events and bringing people together is a lot of fun—but for me, it’s also a playground for innovation. I’ve been experimenting with AI for years now.

“I’m fascinated by the sociological and philosophical dimensions of Second Life,” as she puts it. “What does it mean to upload your consciousness to the cloud? What if a version of you could live on and interact even when you’re offline? I love diving into those questions—and I’ve made videos about that too.” Here’s her YouTube channel for much more.

Emily tells me she may host another event like this soon — I’ll post when details when she does!

Hat tip to, well, Philip Rosedale, who was also duly impressed: “So weird and wonderful…”

So weird and wonderful… AI-created video of humans staring in fascination at an ongoing birthday party in #SecondLife https://t.co/aALWazOxOe pic.twitter.com/UJ3HpOmLr4

— Philip Rosedale (@philiprosedale) August 4, 2025

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Seen another innovative SL experience lately? Post details in this open forum post or here, or slide into my DMs on Twitter, Facebook, or Discord at wja_hamlet.