Peak Bono: AI, VR and a Dad Sermon May Save Apple's Vision Pro
'Stories of Surrender' finally gives the hardware dud a reason to exist and shows a way to innovate in immersive storytelling
I write every other Tue. for paid subscribers and recently reported on Cursor, the app that could supercharge A24; the Chinese AI that should scare you; and why OpenAI’s Ghiblification moment should be a wake-up call for Hollywood.
A few weeks ago, I watched a double bill of Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson in the Hollywood Bowl, surrounded by rich media types in cowboy hats, pressed linen and Lucchese boots, murmuring reverently about Dylan’s genius while sipping overpriced cocktails. Dylan was listless, barely acknowledging the crowd, his lyrics sounding more like murmurs than messages.
Willie, in contrast, was charming, gracious, and loose. But even those with excellent seats — close enough to see the whites of Nelson’s eyes while he sang “Shotgun Willie” — I spent most of the concert watching the monitors. And not high-res ones, either.
This felt bizarre and anachronistic, and not just because I was watching two guys over the age of 80 play to a crowd mostly also past its prime. I mean, think about it — a few years from now, who will want to watch an indifferent Dylan mumbling with his back to the audience on a screen not fit for your home theater when AI could put you face-to-face, close enough to touch, with a young Dylan staring you down?
Live concerts won’t escape AI, at least not for long. We have already seen the hologram movement push Tupac back onstage, but what AI could really do to enhance concerts is create continuity across multiple cameras to create a seamless, live-feeling experience. And the same elements that make a show unforgettable — atmosphere, intimacy, and emotional resonance — are exactly what AI is learning to recreate and amplify. As immersive tools improve, fans won’t settle for fumbling indifference. They’ll expect to see a cleaned up version of the best that this artist ever presented, and what’s now considered “live” may be rendered surprisingly dull by comparison.
Imagine instead if Dylan, who once stunned fans by going electric at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966, used that same rebellious instinct to embrace AI and cutting-edge VR. What if he recreated that infamous moment, the boos, the spotlight, the crackling electric guitar, inside a virtual space where you could feel the stakes and the fury?
I’ve written in the past about how AI is making video generation faster and cheaper. But what happens when AI is used not to cut costs, but to achieve a step function change that presents an old genre in a new way?
That’s the ambition behind Bono’s latest project, Stories of Surrender, for Apple — a visually rich, immersive film and VR adaptation of his 2022 stage show and memoir Surrender. It’s the first feature-length film Apple has made for its Vision Pro VR headset — or “spatial computer,” as the company terms it — and it’s a rare attempt to use artificial intelligence in service of VR storytelling that’s not just a spectacle, but a genuine work of narrative art. The film and immersive experience premiered on May 30 on both Vision Pro and Apple TV+.
The artistic results are stunning. So much of what we see with AI is an attempt to just replicate existing genres without… well, without artists. But Apple was trying to give an artist and his fan a new level of intimacy by using AI to make it seem like you’re onstage. That’s somewhat on-brand for Bono and Apple, who have collaborated on custom iPods among other things, creating environments that are both familiar but also shockingly new.
Today I’ll get into:
How Bono accidentally made the first great use case for the Vision Pro
How AI’s role behind the scenes redefines it as a creative scaffold, not a flashy gimmick
The hidden AI tricks that saved immersive storytelling from falling apart: frame-rate syncing, lens calibration, and creative scaffolding
The surprise emotional gut punch of Surrender — and how Bono used next-gen tech to talk about dads, grief and… God
Why immersive storytelling might actually work this time (sorry, Meta)
— after a decade of misfires and metaverse nonsense, this might be the medium’s first real emotional winWhat this means for Apple, artists and the next wave of narrative tech and studios willing to reinvent themselves
What Bono’s crew learned about directing inside a story and why traditional filmmaking rules don’t apply