AI did not change what a hologram is. It changed who can afford one.
For twenty years the hard part of holographic performance was never the projection. It was the content.
Putting a life-size figure on a stage is an optical problem, and we solved that a long time ago. Creating the figure was a visual effects problem, and it was expensive. A photoreal digital human took months of specialist work and a budget that only a handful of productions in the world could carry. That is why the famous holographic moments of the last two decades are famous. There were not many of them, because almost nobody could pay for one.
What actually changed
Generative AI collapsed the content cost. Work that took months of VFX now takes weeks, at up to 80% less. The projection side did not get cheaper. The thing being projected did.
That shifts who the technology is available to. A regional venue can now commission a holographic show. An artist’s estate can build a permanent residency rather than a one off spectacle. A brand can run a holographic campaign as a line item rather than a moonshot.
What did not change
A few things AI has not solved, and probably will not.
Capture still matters. An AI model trained on badly lit footage produces a badly lit hologram. We shoot specifically for holographic output through our Holicom process because the requirements are different from film or broadcast, and no amount of post production fixes a bad capture.
Physics still matters. You still need optically clear fire certified foil, correct projection geometry and the right lighting relationship in the room. Those are not software problems.
And judgement still matters. The difference between a holographic performance that moves an audience and one that reads as a gimmick is almost never technical. It is staging, timing and restraint, which is the part that takes twenty years to learn.
Where this goes
The interesting consequence is not better holograms. It is more of them, in more places, for more people.
AI generates photoreal humans. 5G and Starlink move them anywhere. What has been missing is the layer that takes a digital human out of a screen and puts it in a room. That is the part we build.