Holograms are a pillar of science fiction, emerging across the great expanses of Star Wars, Star Trek, HaloAnd The extent. If a story takes place in the future or in space, it probably contains a hologram. Unfortunately, this is less the case in real life, despite the fact that many tech companies are keen to make holograms a reality.
The latest effort to broadcast a holographic device into our world has just come Mirrora Brooklyn-based company that has been into 3D holographic displays since almost a decade. Today it announced the Musubi, a consumer-focused product digital photo frame.
Courtesy of Looking Glass
Upload any image or video, and Musubi uses artificial intelligence to extract the most important part and place it in space as a 3D image in the frame. It could be a video of a child’s first steps or a snapshot of a birthday party. (Or, as one of Looking Glass’s examples, a cat exposing its asshole.) The image will be displayed in 3D form, viewable in all its holographic glory across nearly 170 degrees.
“Our goal is to make holograms accessible to everyone,” says Shawn Frayne, CEO of Looking Glass. “In a way, this is as close as you can get to the science fiction dream.”
The Musubi is far from anything like the hologram-adjacent model. Ava AI that gaming company Razer announced at CES this year and revealed more details about this week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Razer’s offering is an AI chatbot character that floats in a 3D tube that you can put on your desk. The company touts it as a “Friend for Life” that can step in while you play or help you organize tasks in your daily life. (Yes, it looks like a cute anime girl, but there are other characters.)
The Musubi is a 7-inch photo and video frame. No Wi-Fi connection required, no apps, no on-device cameras, and no subscription services to make it work. The actual processing required to turn an image or video into a hologram is done in a program on a PC or MacBook, included free of charge by Looking Glass. Once the images are edited, you can add them to the device via a USB-C cable; the Musubi can store up to 1,000 images. (Videos take up more space, but are limited to 30-second clips.) The Musubi can be plugged into a wall outlet and has a built-in rechargeable battery that lasts up to three hours.
Courtesy of Looking Glass
Frayne is keen to point out that this is one of the first devices to use fully local generations of AI and machine learning to power its holographic images. He says the goal is for people not to have to worry about their images being fed into AI generators by giant tech companies. After all, it’s his daughter who takes her first steps in the emotional image that Looking Glass uses in a video to market the Musubi. Frayne says he’s not saying Looking Glass will never make a product with a camera, but the goal was to make the device as simple as possible.
“Looking Glass doesn’t have access to this data, and neither do any of the big AI companies,” says Frayne.
Looking Glass makes display screens with a technology it calls Hololuminescence. This mimics the holographic experience by transforming 2D images on a screen into animated 3D images viewable by multiple people at once. Although its screens are thin, backgrounds are depicted as stationary pieces, maintaining a sense of space that feels like looking through a door. The image, however spacious it may be, is always behind a screen. So it’s not exactly a Cortana-style hologram you can hold in your hand, but a view that nevertheless recreates the process.
The process seems very similar to the features you can find on Google or Meta platforms that allow you to animate with AI, thus transforming a still picture one of you dancing. Frayne compares the technology to Apple’s Sharp Projecta method of synthesizing images with photorealistic depth.
Looking Glass announced its first hololuminescent displays in 2019. These were mostly large, expensive displays aimed at professional customers like medical clinics, museums or to power large bus stop advertisements. Prices range from $2,000 for the smaller screens at $20,000 for one on a human scale display.
Looking Glass has already flirted with the mainstream space with its $229 Mirror Go. (Which WIRED included in its the best of CES choice in 2024.) But this was intended to be a development kit. What Looking Glass hopes to achieve with its first consumer product is a much simpler frame that can be used at home by almost anyone.
Courtesy of Looking Glass
The Musubi costs $99 for the first 24 hours Kickstarter. After that, it will cost $149. (While Looking Glass succeeded products launched on Kickstarter previously, Frayne says the company will still produce the Musubi even if it doesn’t reach its goal on the crowdfunding platform.) The first units will ship sometime in June 2026. After that, Frayne says the company will evaluate how the experiment goes.
This isn’t the first time AI and art have mixed in a physical photo frame. Just a few months ago at CES 2026, a company called Fraimic presented an E Ink digital frame powered by generative AI. Say a prompt indicating what you want to see, and it will animate the image into the art style of your choice. But few images have the realistic depth of Musubi.
“We’re sort of at the very beginning of this AI revolution and we wanted to try to do something different than what’s out there elsewhere,” says Frayne. “We’re curious if people like the opportunity to have a completely local model.”