Then I saw her AI face, and now I’m a metaverse believer

Me of a month ago would be very disappointed with me of today. “You’ve fallen for the hype,” old me would say. “You’ve drunk so much Kool-Aid it’s pickled what’s left of your pathetic brain cells.”

But that cynical and rather rude yester-me hadn’t been to this year’s CES ( see p26), hadn’t wandered the halls of Eureka Park and seen the scattering of seeds that will become the metaverse. For yes, I’m a believer.

Now, before you check to see if this month’s magazine has been sponsored by the corporate entity formerly known as Facebook, let me explain First of all, I don’t think we’re all going to be spending our lives living in a Ready Player One- like virtual reality. The metaverse – I wish I could think of a better word! – will shift in shape and form over time. There is no one metaverse, just as there is no one defining moment in the history of the internet. Like language, it twists, adapts and is reimagined by each generation.

What I saw at CES were the foundational technologies that will mould the metaverse over the next decade. Some will require eyewear to enhance what we see, with one example being virtual holiday tours – not necessarily to replace trips abroad, although given some holidaymakers’ desire to “do” a country in a day it wouldn’t be a surprise if they opt to forgo the hassle of plane journeys for a bite-sized package tour of London in minutes. Instead, virtual tours will help us pick exactly where we want to go and which hotels we want to stay in.

This isn’t a new idea. What is new is how realistic things are starting to become, and the blurring of the lines between what is real and what is “meta”. Just consider films where CGI-generated backdrops are indiscernible from genuine footage. Or the demo I watched at CES, where a company took a scene from an American TV show and regenerated the actor’s mouth movements and voice so that he was talking in Korean rather than English, complete with realistic emotional intonations.

Another CES demo saw an avatar of a doctor gazing at viewers from a 50in LG TV, dispensing advice to an elderly lady who was recovering from an operation. The AI doctor asked, in natural language, how the lady was and whether she was taking her medication. She then offered to guide her through a selection of simple rehabilitation exercises. This was a two-way conversation that appeared far superior to the rushed ten-minute chats many patients have with their harassed GP.

This isn’t the metaverse sold to us by a floating Mark Zuckerberg. That’s something you can already experience via powerful VR headsets should you wish to. This is a metaverse that solves real-world problems using technologies that are moving into the mainstream: AI in its many forms, VR/AR glasses, and a gargantuan amount of data to create realistic digital twins of the real world.

The metaverse is coming. Aspects of it are already here. And if old-me is still reading, allow me to assure you that I’ve never drunk a drop of Kool-Aid in my life.