As we’ve mentioned before, what the metaverse really brings to the table is its ability to transport audiences into a completely immersive world in a way that we’ve never seen before. At the forefront of these immersive experiences is technology that can bend, enhance, or replace reality, as well as artificial intelligence.
In this second chapter, we’ll take a look at:
- What AR, VR, and mixed reality are and how they contribute to the metaverse
- How immersive AR and VR are setting the stage for future events and experiences in the virtual world and everyday life
- How AI and Veritone technology can add more immersive elements and qualities to AR and VR
What is the role of AR, VR, and mixed reality in the metaverse?
The first step to comprehending the roles that augmented, virtual, and mixed realities will play in the metaverse is [understanding] the difference between the three.
Augmented reality: Augmented reality is designed for free movement, meaning that it projects images over whatever you’re viewing, whether it’s a part of smartphone apps or smart glasses like Microsoft HoloLens.
Virtual reality: Virtual reality makes use of VR headsets like the Oculus Quest or Valve Index to completely take over the wearer’s vision for a fully immersive, 360-degree experience of a virtual world that replaces the user’s view of the outside world.
Mixed reality: Mixed reality offers an enhanced form of augmented reality, bridging the gap between AR and VR. Mixed reality merges the real and virtual worlds to create new environments and visuals where real and virtual objects can coexist and interact with each other.
With the use of metaverse AR/VR and mixed reality, metaverse participants will be able to enjoy more immersive experiences, blurring the lines between reality and the virtual world. This will make gaming come to life, concerts and performances pop, and professional or educational experiences seem more authentic, making it easy to see why the metaverse becomes more and more popular with each passing day.
How have virtual worlds become a more important part of everyday life?
As we progress into the future, it’s clear that virtual worlds will be an increasingly important part of our daily lives—and not just in a gaming or entertainment sense. Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality has already contributed to more professional, essential industries such as education, healthcare, customer service, and more.
During the Adobe Summit 2022 event, Adobe opened with the belief that the metaverse will play a huge part in blurring the distinctions between the physical and digital worlds, and that all it’ll take to accomplish this are the right tools to enable that vision.
In a statement, Adobe’s CEO, Shantanu Narayen, said, “Increasingly, we’re using the digital world to do things that we once only did in the physical world. The ongoing conversation on the metaverse reflects the fact that the distinction between what people do in the physical and virtual world is blurring.”
We’ve already seen incredible examples and results of how AR and VR have practical uses in the real world. One such example is a 2016 study on The Applications of Virtual Reality Technology in Medical Groups Teaching. The study examined 21 medical papers and found that in these cases:
- 11 (48%) used virtual education technology for laparoscopic surgery training
- 17 (74%) reported that VR improved learning
- 20 (87%) reported that those trained with VR had a higher accuracy level in medical practice
Aside from medical training, other examples of practical AR/VR uses include touring properties, virtually staging furniture in your home, classroom education, retail, public safety, etc. In fact, most people have probably used AR/VR, maybe without even realizing it.
How can AI make AR and VR more immersive?
To keep furthering innovation, immersion, and experiences, the power source of AR and VR experiences will need to one-up as well. In experts’ opinions, the next generation of VR and AR will rely heavily on AI, particularly on machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, deep learning, and neural networks.
Combining the visual powers of AR/VR with the cognitive powers of AI would entirely enhance how immersive and realistic the virtual world can be, enhancing entertainment, meetings, or even simple hangouts with long-distance friends and family.
Incorporating artificial intelligence is a key ingredient to creating more realistic, authentic experiences in and out of the metaverse. This is where AI-powered tools like Veritone Avatar and Veritone Voice come into play.
Veritone Avatar
With Veritone Avatar, companies and individuals can create hyper-realistic digital personas to represent their brand in the metaverse, whether that’s using a stock likeness or capturing the likeness of a celebrity or brand ambassador (with permission).
Some potential use cases include:
- Virtual meetings
- Lifelike NFT avatars
- Customer service, support, and sales
- Social media interactions
- Patient care
If the goal is to create experiences and interactions that blur the lines of what’s real and what’s virtual, then the more realistic an avatar looks, moves, and sounds is key to selling that experience.
Veritone Voice
While synthetic voice can be used in the real world just as much as the virtual, synthetic voice applications like Veritone Voice show an immense amount of promise for metaverse experiences.
Veritone Voice is an ethical, cost-effective way of using stock or custom voices to represent brands and individuals in a number of different mediums, languages, accents, and more.
With Veritone Voice, users can create more immersive content while:
- Minimizing production costs
- Personalizing and scaling production efforts
- Overcoming language and visual obstacles
- Making content more accessible to different demographics
- Increasing vocal lineup
- Ethically automizing familiar voices like deceased talent, industry leaders, educators, and more
At Veritone, we offer multiple metaverse-ready AI applications that can help you create more immersive experiences for your audiences in our Veriverse platform. To learn more about how these tools can combine with your brand’s AR, VR, and mixed reality efforts to take your user engagement to the next level, request a demo with one of our experts.