Meta, the company, is NOT synonymous with the Metaverse! Despite Zuckerberg’s apology about “getting it wrong,” the Metaverse is not dead! While Meta is laying off, the Metaverse is alive and evolving with AI paving the way for it to be embedded in our daily reality.
What is the Metaverse?
It’s essentially a 3D version of the internet. And the internet certainly didn’t appear in its current form overnight. Remember that it started back in the late 1960s!
What does AI provide?
AI powers the Metaverse. It makes the Metaverse user-friendly and easy to use.
Using AI technologies such as Natural Language Processing, speech recognition, computer vision, translation, and augmented reality, users can interact in the Metaverse (in 3D!) in their native language and through images and videos.
Chatbots, accurate digital avatars, non-playing characters (NPCs) in gaming, translating languages so that people all over the world can easily communicate, analyzing content, speech and image recognition, hyper-personalization of experiences, fully automated creation of digital worlds, and more.
How do AI and the Metaverse work together? Together, they can play a HUGE role in healthcare, gaming, education, and more.
Healthcare: Imagine a doctor’s appointment that allows your doctor to virtually examine and diagnose you. Or medical students able to examine a 3D human body, inside and out, with only a headset. This is so exciting! People with disabilities, or people who live far from healthcare providers or in countries with limited resources, will all have access to care.
Gaming: Gaming was the first industry to embrace the Metaverse and they heavily leverage AI. A fun example is that the largest concert attendance in history happened in the Metaverse with over 12 million people attending a rap concert and even buying digital merchandise – yes, you can have your concert t-shirt in the Metaverse!
Education: Education, both for student classrooms and company onboarding, are already being impacted by the Metaverse (powered by AI). Imagine being a new employee working from your comfortable home office and “meeting” fully 3D versions of your colleagues. Using chatbots to quickly find the answers to your newbie questions, customizing learning content to your individual needs, and crafting your own digital avatar, which can help children to avoid bullying based on their appearance, are more ways that AI powers the education Metaverse.
Risks of using AI and the Metaverse?
Deciding who will take ownership of the AI and who will profit from it.
Challenges of transparency in a space where fraud can run rampant in the form of deepfakes or other fraud.
Determining legal use of AI technologies in the Metaverse.
The longstanding problem of ethics when using artificial intelligence.
What happens now?
AI is flourishing and will continue improving, which will bring the Metaverse closer to its end goal of creating a virtual world that allows users to interact with each other and access information in new and innovative ways.
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