(Image credit: Future)
When AI was first introduced, it came in the form of assistants like Siri and Alexa, then came chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini. Since then, we've seen agentic AI (AI agents) take over our computers and do the work for us. Now, big tech is racing towards a new type of AI that truly seems like something out of a sci-fi movie. At least until now. It's called spatial AI and the biggest names in tech are already throwing billions of dollars at it.Rather than simply generating text or images on a screen, spatial AI gives artificial intelligence something it has largely lacked until now: spatial awareness. Here's what you need to know about the next major shift — and why the battle lines are being drawn right now.What is spatial AI anyway? You've probably heard the term a few times and maybe not given it a second thought. However, it's worth understanding, especially because AI moves at such break-neck speeds. Most of us will be using spatial AI more frequently in the upcoming months.While a Large Language Model like ChatGPT knows facts because it was trained on text, a spatial AI system uses cameras, sensors and learned models of physics to continually update its understanding of the worldYou can think of spatial AI as the ultimate upgrade for machine vision. Instead of looking at an isolated photo, for instance, like a chatbot analyzing an uploaded image, spatial AI builds a continuous, three-dimensional understanding of its surroundings. Essentially, it's the difference between looking at a single snapshot of your living room versus actually walking through it, navigating around the coffee table and knowing exactly where the doorway is.While a Large Language Model like ChatGPT knows facts because it was trained on text, a spatial AI system uses cameras, sensors and learned models of physics to track location, movement and objects. Using that information, the AI continually updates its understanding of the world.The race to spatial AI
