Keeping the player in the painting
How Vicarious brings AI refinement to a canvas you start by hand, and the questions that still need player research.
An easel is a useful place to ask a difficult question about creative AI: when a system develops something you started, does the result still feel like your work? In Vicarious, that question begins with picking up a brush. The player makes marks in VR before Paint Skill uses AI to develop the painting.
This is a working integration in our life simulation prototype. It is also part of our research into creative ownership and immersive interaction. We can show the starting canvas and the developed result. Understanding how that change feels to the person holding the brush is work still ahead of us.
Start with an action the player understands
Painting gives the player a subject, a composition and brushwork of their own before AI enters the process. Paint Skill aims to preserve those elements while adding detail. The starting point matters: the player has already made choices that a finished result needs to respect.
In VR, this happens through an object in the room. Unity and Meta Quest turn brushes, controllers and everyday objects into things you use with your hands. The research question is how AI can respond within that interaction without interrupting its flow. A result is only part of the experience; getting from the brush to that result matters too.
Keep the starting point visible
We show before and after states together on the Vicarious page. That makes it possible to look at what changed without remembering a picture that has disappeared behind a tab or a reveal control. The comparison is part of explaining the feature honestly.
The two images also make the research question more concrete. Which subjects, colours and marks still feel like the player’s own? Which details need to survive refinement? These questions are more useful than treating additional detail as an automatic improvement. The stated aim is to preserve authorship, and player feedback is needed to learn what preservation means in practice.
A painting has a life after the easel
Vicarious connects painting progress and owned objects to the wider household. A finished canvas can become part of the home rather than disappearing when the tool closes. The action of making it has a place within the life simulation.
That context shapes another question we want to investigate: does AI belong in everyday play? A player might try a creative tool once because it is unfamiliar. We want to learn whether they would return to it during a household session, and why. A working demonstration alone cannot tell us that.
Measure the experience around the image
Our planned player research includes generation time and the points where waiting, feedback or failures interrupt a painting task. We want to explore how to keep the player informed and in control while a result arrives. These are research plans, rather than findings from completed player studies.
There is a related question across devices. Vicarious has a Quest prototype and a desktop version alongside it, with early multiplayer connecting them. Comparing a shared activity across those ways of interacting could help us observe barriers involving controls, communication, VR familiarity and comfort.
For now, the honest thing we can share is the working integration and the questions it raises. Paint Skill develops a canvas the player begins. The next step is learning which parts of that process support creativity, and which parts get in its way. The Vicarious page shows the feature reel and the wider prototype it belongs to.
