SXSW 2026: Body proxy

For some years now we have mused on the future of work enabled by AI. It will be our tool, it will free us from drudgery to do more meaningful work, we will work side by side, so it is said.

At SXSW, AI continued to disrupt notions of what work can be. At his session “How to Design a Company That AI Can’t Outpace” the futurist Ian Beacraft argued that the collapse in the cost of executing work will allow humans to ascend to more meaningful roles as architects and designers of systems in which AI agents operate.

Elsewhere at the conference, an interactive experience at the XR Experience show explores a more dystopian future which might be described as “humans-as-a-service”. “Body Proxy” presents a scenario in which humans are reduced to purely physical labor, and controlled by their AI masters.

Created by Los Angeles-based arts, gaming, VR & XR studio Tender Claws, the experience simulates a workplace onboarding scenario. The “workers” aka festival attendees wearing Meta smart glasses enter a testing area where they receive quickfire instructions via a screen. These include bizarre directives like “wrap a banana like a present,” “perform housework” or “make a pillow suffer.” After receiving brutal analysis of their task performance, an IPO or “Initial Person Offering” takes place where their avatar is tokenized and traded on a people-based market.

An installation of a sqaure space room surrounded by shelves and objects with a large screen on which instructions for tasks are appearing. A women in grey top and green slacks is performing a task. — Main image: Body Proxy by Tender Claws at XR Experience, SXSW 2026

The piece, which won the XR Experience competition, is “a satirical look at the world we are creating in the present,” said Tender Claws founder Danny Cannizzaro in a conversation with VML Intelligence.

Cannizzaro adds, “In this experience, you're signing up to be kind of a worker, a laborer for your body proxy. Your labor cycles are being put on a stock market and tokenized and AI agents bid on and ask you to do tasks. The better you do, the more your value goes up.”

The premise may appear far-fetched, but with the rise of human-in-the-loop systems or a gig economy orchestrated by algorithms, Tender Claw’s satire does have some root in reality. Cannizzaro explains, the goal is to prompt the audience to “reflect about their relationship to technology [and] the ways and capabilities of the technologies that are shaping our present.”

Next stop, AI bosses?

Main image: Body Proxy by Tender Claws at XR Experience, SXSW 2026