Artificial reality was the term Myron W. Krueger used to describe his interactive immersive environments, based on video recognition techniques, that put a user in full, unencumbered contact with the digital world. He started this work in the late 1960s and is considered to be a key figure in the early innovation of virtual reality. His first book Artificial Reality was published in 1983 and updated in Artificial Reality II in 1991 (both published by Addison-Wesley).

The term is occasionally used in New Age spirituality to describe the reality we are currently living in.