Public Speaking Q&A Practice with LLM-Generated Personas in Virtual Reality

This paper introduces a novel VR-based Q&A practice system that harnesses the power of Large Language Models (LLMs). We support Q&A practice for upcoming public speaking by providing an immersive VR training environment populated with LLM-generated audiences, each capable of posing diverse and realistic questions based on different personas. We conducted a pilot user study involving 20 participants who engaged in VR-based Q&A practice sessions. The sessions featured a variety of questions regarding presentation material provided by the participants, all of which were generated by LLM-based personas. Through post-surveys and interviews, we evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed method. The participants valued the system for engagement and focus while also identifying several areas for improvement. Our study demonstrated the potential of integrating VR and LLMs to create a powerful, immersive tool for Q&A practice.