Remember back in 2022, when many laughed as the media reported that Mark Zuckerberg’s “Metaverse” was a multi-billion-dollar failure? Everything we saw about the Metaverse looked like a Zoom meeting in a Wii game with legless avatars.
But, as many of us dismissed Zuckerberg’s mistake, the Metaverse was continuing to expand — and so was Zuckerberg’s influence on the very nature of reality in the future.
This all became evident at the end of September, when Zuckerberg did an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, in which the two interacted using photorealistic codec avatars and spatial audio in a virtual environment while wearing Meta Quest Pro headsets. The interview looked scarily lifelike, as the Wii avatars of the old Metaverse were replaced with actual faces.
To accomplish this, Zuckerberg and Fridman visited Meta facilities where their faces and expressions were scanned, creating biometric data that was then used for the interview with virtual versions of themselves. This technological development is more significant than the public may realize, and the implications of it can’t be overstated.
This idea of using biometric data might be confusing but, essentially, it involves taking information about a person that is unique to them and converting it into ones and zeros (similar to how your smartphone can recognize you by your face or fingerprint). Creating this Metaverse version of someone currently takes hours of scanning, but Zuckerberg hopes the process will soon only require two to three minutes on a phone.
To streamline the process, Zuckerberg stated that he intends to replace the Meta Quest Pro headsets with Meta sunglasses. Although this hardware has not yet been developed, Meta introduced new Meta Ray-Ban sunglasses in late September, which would allow users to livestream and use Meta’s own artificial intelligence (Meta AI). Zuckerberg also said he hopes that Meta may only be five years away from developing sunglasses that allow the wearer to engage with mixed reality, viewing the real world while interacting with holograms and artificial objects.
So, why care about Zuckerberg’s virtual technology? Because Zuckerberg has set his sights on dominating the landscape of virtual reality, mixed reality, and AI. The technology is changing quicker than we realize, and Zuckerberg and Meta appear to be making significant strides to own and control the next way we communicate.
Eventually, people won’t be chatting with a cartoon avatar or a photorealistic person in virtual or mixed reality; instead, they will be speaking with an AI personality replica, having a conversation with a computer that could be masquerading as anyone. And, with biometric data, that “anyone” could be a famous person, a historical figure, or even a deceased relative.
Imagine a world in which you could put on a pair of sunglasses and speak to an AI version of George Washington or Joseph Stalin. Think about what it would be like to have full conversations with a dead parent or child after AI recreates their image for you. Meetings, gaming, education, and grieving will all be changed dramatically.
The effect will be immense and greater than anything most of us can imagine. And it might all be in the hands of a man who already controls the means of communication used by billions of people around the world. Zuckerberg and Meta already dominate social media with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, with the potential to greatly influence the 7.5-billion individuals who use these platforms.
Most companies don’t have the money or resources to create a virtual, AI-dominated world, but Zuckerberg has the personal fortune to make him one of the 10 richest people on the planet and one of the wealthiest people in the history of mankind. And Meta has a value of nearly $800 billion. With this kind of financial backing, Zuckerberg could be virtually unstoppable in his quest to control the next way we will communicate.
In the James Bond film, “Moonraker,” the villain Hugo Drax says, “First there was the dream. Now there is reality.” Zuckerberg is about to create — and own — our new virtual reality.
Andrew Selepak, Ph.D. is a social media professor in the Department of Media Production, Management, and Technology at the University of Florida (UF), who researches media psychology and pop culture.