Meet me in the Metaverse?
Do you want to?
2023 Nov 6th — General edits. Thanks to my friend (Khasir Hean — a AI engineer who is looking for his next gig, feel free to message him!) who helped me proof read and proposed some edits.
Ever since Mr. Zuckerberg announced renamed Facebook to Meta, and trying to make the Metaverse happen, we been trying to be convinced to hang out in Metaverse.
Here is the Google Trends for “Meta” (Search team), and “Metaverse” since Sept 2021 till presence day:
The decline of searches for “Metaverse” is evident, but the interest in “Meta” continues to spike. Or maybe “Meta” is now equivalent to “Metaverse”. But if I switch the “Meta” (search term) to the specific “Meta” (a technology company), Google Trend gives me a very different picture.
Now that’s a little bit more intriguing. Maybe Meta as a company is almost ubiquitous with “Metaverse”.
Anyway…the reason I am writing this post is because one of the podcasts I listened to was this:
You can watch the full video podcast here on Youtube
It’s amazing, as you can tell from Lex Fridman’s podcast preview, the avatars are really photo-realistic.
The process of creating these photo-realistic avatars requires extensive 3D scanning of their physical body prior to the podcast (as Lex Fridman and Mark Zuckerberg confirmed during the podcast). Zuckerberg did mention the Meta team is still working through optimizing the process of creating these photo-realistic avatars. I.e. Streamline the 3D Scanning process down to a point of using your phone or an app.
As Fridman continues to marvel at the experience of his photo-realistic avatar’s interactions with another photo-realistic avatar of Zuckerberg, I don’t think I can’t relate to his experience for a few reasons:
- I don’t own any VR headset
- I have severe motion sickness (I can’t even play both Zelda (BOTW/TOK) or any First-Person Shooting game for long periods of time without feeling nauseated and wanting to puke 🤮)
- I am not in any Metaverse right now
As the podcast went on, Zuckerberg and Fridman continued to chat about what this means to the physical world, and the possibility of how this will be a difference maker. Zuckerberg mentioned a few use cases:
- how this can reduce travel efforts for meeting loved ones (like having a conversation across different planets?)
- how this can improve how people work together (instead of video conferencing)
As I continued to watch the podcast, there were a few things that stood out…despite the photo-realistic avatar, the eyes and mouth do capture the physical movements well….I feel like there is a little bit of uncanny valley there:
- Zuckerberg’s lack of facial muscle movements around the cheeks and eye area (at the beginning of the podcast, you can see Zuckerberg wearing the headset and you can see some facial muscle movements)
- Fridman’s constant blinking is a bit distracting — I am not sure if he blinks while he was wearing the headset
- Both forehead and lips are a little bit stiff for Zuckerberg and Fridman
At this point…I can’t help but think, in contrast to a gamified avatar you created once and then continue to use to represent yourself to end of time, your gamified avatar would remain the same; when you create a photo-realistic avatar…as time changes…your physical self will age; I guess you have an option of creating another aged version of the photo-realistic avatar of you?
I mean, take the idea of creating an avatar to represent you and continue to represent you: as you continue to age, do you want to update your photo-realistic avatar? To put it simply, let’s say you create a photo-realistic avatar of yourself when you are in your prime like, 30 years old, and then 5 years or a few years later, your life changes, and your physical appearance changes for the worse. Would you want to update your photo-realistic avatar?
Or are you pretending to be you at your prime?
Obviously someone at Meta has probably already thought about this, I am assuming there isn’t enough of a user base and the product hasn’t been around long enough to see how users behave around these avatars?
A thought experiment I have is: what if my physical self is no longer the same as my avatar? If I am having a long-term virtual conversation in my prime avatar with another person over the course of years, how would that feel as time goes on?
I assume the unchanging avatar wouldn’t affect the relationships, but one day when you meet the person in real life, it would be shocking to see your friend in person looking different from their avatar (this sounds like an episode of black mirror).
On the other hand, I listened to another CEO’s interview, Brian Chesky, he emphasizes creating interactive human interaction experience on AirBnB:
Another 1-hour podcast you can listen to
(P:S/ I listen to a lot of podcasts, it’s how I learn things today)
The two tech CEOs have different philosophies in terms of how they want to build their product experience. They both focus on human experiences, one with more virtual experiences than the other.
As I ponder over the rise of the Metaverse, I marvel at its technological achievements, the sophisticated technology required to achieve photo-realism. As these products are introduced to the market, I don’t know the long-term effects of using them. It has business use cases that could transform a lot of industries. In fact, it already impacts the film and entertainment industry: de-aging an actor’s face, producing photo-realistic CGI effects, etc.
Do I want to meet people in the Metaverse? Not until I can get past my severe motion sickness.
