In the previous blog, we looked at how cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens will play an important role in the metaverse. However, one of the critical aspects of the metaverse that’s often glossed over is the underlying technology required to support it.
When people think of the metaverse, they often envision an alternate world or virtual realities. However, it’s really an interconnected ecosystem of devices, physical spaces, social media platforms, and digitally created environments.
The technology requirement will be significant to run the metaverse from content creation, tracking, and engagement to financial transactions involving new, virtual products, digital currencies and access like crypto or NFTs.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will be a key component to effectively connect, manage, and run the metaverse efficiently to support such a complex integration of previously disconnected virtual and physical spaces.
In this blog, we’ll cover:
- What’s the role of AI in the metaverse?
- How will AI help organize the metaverse?
- In what way will metaverse AI create an inclusive and immersive environment?
- How can metaverse artificial intelligence help with content creation?
What’s the role of AI in the metaverse?
The metaverse needs AI to fulfill many of the promises investors and developers have touted. The key areas that AI will play a role in making a reality in the metaverse include:
- Leveraging AIOps to make the underlying infrastructure manageable
- Index and help manage the storage and transmission of both structured and unstructured data
- Produce and manage content as well as support synthetic media for immersive experiences
How will AI help organize the metaverse?
Forrester defines AIOps as software that utilizes AI or machine learning (ML), or possibly other advanced methods, to provide real-time correlations and prescriptive and predictive insights. Doing so provides teams with a clear view into the health and performance of the business to make decisions faster and resolve any issues as quickly as possible.
AIOps will enable businesses to efficiently allocate resources and monitor metaverse infrastructure components at scale in terms of the metaverse. Think of it as a comprehensive platform that’s always running and has the flexibility to scale as needed massively.
Underneath the hood, the various moving pieces, including all the data produced to inform decision-making across disciplines, AI can make the scale of the metaverse possible without overburdening resources.
Indexing and structuring diverse data types at scale in the metaverse
AI in the metaverse will make data management and protection less of a burden and guarantee an immersive experience. From user-generated content to vendor creative, these environments will produce a massive amount of new information and data that can become quickly unmanageable.
For example, a multi-user augmented reality experience might track user movements, body language, and voice inflection to influence personalized experiences. These insights will need AI processing data to help the humans behind the scenes understand user intent. Then, Aligning it with user interests and desires will ensure the best experience possible in their prescribed virtual world.
In what way will metaverse AI create an inclusive and immersive environment?
Languages are a barrier that is both social and technical. AI can help break down the cultural barriers that bar people from interacting. The metaverse must provide a means to input languages and dialects and translate them to serve content to interested users who might not speak the language of the original piece of content.
In addition, they must account for how they intend to make the metaverse engaging for those who have medical conditions that limit or prevent their ability to hear, speak, and see. AI will also unlock greater capability to reach as many audiences as possible by overcoming these potential communication challenges.
Here are a few of the capabilities AI delivers to overcome unseen walls between individuals as they engage in the metaverse.
Translation
Applications such as FaceTime already translate conversations today to help break down the language barrier. However, to achieve this at scale and extend it beyond conversations to digital content, AI can accelerate this process and provide users with translations for media they find relevant to them in near-real-time.
Image and object detection
With object detection and various other cognitive capabilities, AI can guarantee users with hearing and seeing impairments participate in the metaverse. Connecting this with a captioning function or a synthetic voice can help describe the experience and bring it to life.
Synthetic media
When you consider the potential use cases of synthetic media, particularly synthetic voice, those who are limited or can’t speak can select a voice of their choosing and interact with others without limitation. And this capability can extend to everyone in the metaverse as people create their digital identity to represent themselves in the metaverse.
How can metaverse artificial intelligence help with content creation?
The metaverse will be a rich, vibrant place full of unique experiences and engaging content—but a large portion of that content will likely involve AI. The sheer scale creators can achieve with AI, from their digital persona to text content transformed into audio, will only enhance, and accelerate new experiences.
For example, the metaverse will allow people from different countries and cultures to meet and interact through experiences such as museums, exhibits, amusement parks, or even beaches and malls, whether in the physical realm or virtually created.
With AI working behind the scenes at every level, each user will encounter a personalized experience tailored just for them through the content they interact with, adding an entirely new way of consuming content compared to platforms today.
A look at digital personas
People will consume content in the metaverse through a digital persona that AI will create. Like non-player characters (NPCs) in video games, the potential for synthetic characters in the metaverse that people can interact with is just one potential use case.
A more immediate use case in the early stages of the metaverse includes using synthetic voice and avatars to create digital personas. Veritone Voice provides access to both preapproved stock voices for use and custom voices approved by the voice owner. Likewise, Veritone Avatar offers hyperreal digital humans to humanize the digital experience.
We’ll explore this technology further in the next blog as we focus more on the future roadmap of the metaverse and the use cases that it will uncover.