The Virtual Beings Facebook Group is a tightly scoped community that was set up as a discussion and sharing space for people working on, studying, or building character-like virtual entities, with an emphasis on interactive, persistent, AI-powered digital characters and the future of human relationships with them. Its stated identity is purpose-specific rather than general-interest, and it is framed as actively moderated to keep posts on-topic, with explicit guidance that unrelated sharing, tutoring requests, and advertising are not what the group is for; it also draws a clear boundary away from physical-robot or implant-oriented themes in order to keep the focus on screen-based or digitally embodied beings and creator practices around them.
Edward Saatchi is positioned within the group as the founding convenor and the figure most closely associated with defining its scope and tone, using it as an ecosystem touchpoint for the wider “virtual beings” community that formed around his event activity and adjacent collaborations. In that context, he is described as an Emmy award-winning producer and as CEO and co-founder of Fable Studio, with earlier work associated with Oculus Story Studio, and he functions in the group narrative as the person who framed “virtual beings” as a category and gathered practitioners, researchers, and industry participants into a coherent network that the group could serve between events.
Marcus Endicott appears as a later entrant who became involved through operational support and community stewardship rather than as the original founder, with the group described as having functioned as a feedback-oriented community tied to the event ecosystem. In that capacity, his role is characterized as helping administer or run the group after being brought in by Saatchi around the end of 2019, effectively acting as a moderator/organizer who supported the community’s continuity and practical functioning as a place for ongoing discussion, coordination, and critique connected to the wider virtual beings scene.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/virtualbeings