This new Vision Pro app lets you talk to some of the greatest minds from the past

Ever wondered how it would feel if you could talk to some of the smartest minds that ever existed? A new Vision Pro app called 'Talking Heads: 3D Chat' lets you do just that. You can use your $3,499 spatial computing headset (if you have one) to have a voice chat with historical figures.

The app lets you experience living history by "challenging Aristotle on ethics, exploring relativity with Einstein, or discussing breakthroughs with Curie." According to its App Store listing, historical figures are represented as animated 3D "Heads" hand-modelled by AAA character artists and animated natively within Apple's Reality Composer Pro.

The Talking Heads app was launched with the Heads of some popular scientists, artists, and activists, including Einstein, Edison, Gandhi, Napoleon, DaVinci, and Lincoln. Future updates will bring more characters like Marie Curie, Cleopatra, Earhart, and Aristotle.

The app lets you have real-time conversations with these popular figures and uses AI audio technology to present their authentic voices and personalities. You can invite multiple personalities or Heads into the same digital space to host historical roundtable discussions and debates.

On a side note, Talking Heads could be an example of something Apple's late co-founder imagined around 40 years ago about current-day generative AI and the ability to talk back to digital figures.

Steve Jobs Archive uploaded an unseen video of Jobs speaking at the International Design Conference in 1983. The app has also taken inspiration from popular media, including Futurama’s Head Museum, The Wizard of Oz’s Great and Powerful Head, and Return to Oz.

Talking Heads was developed by Matthew Hoerl, who has previously built the 3D scanner app called Beautiful Things. The Vision Pro app is about 400MB in size, works in English, and requires VisionOS 2.1 or later to work. It's free to use but offers credit packs as in-app purchases.

"Talking Heads is an exploration of digital resurrection in the agentic age. While our biological bodies will degrade, our digital essence will be able [to be] easily captured authentically and remixed," the developer said.

"We’re starting with the iconic characters from Apple’s Think Different campaign, to pay tribute to Apple and the visionOS team."

Hoerl told Neowin that the app is available in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. It will expand to more regions soon, "wherever the Vision Pro is sold is the goal." While the Vision Pro was picked as the first platform, Hoerl said, "we look forward to seeing how people enjoy it and will expand to other platforms when the time is right."