The metaverse is not just about creating realistic virtual experiences, but enabling hyperreal ones. This is the process of creating personalized content based on data, or the things people do and say, and what that reveals about them.
In a sense, the hyperreal is not just a goal, but possibly a necessary end state of the metaverse. Scaling immersive digital experiences for billions of people will only be possible when artificial intelligence (AI) automates content creation. Hyperreality occurs when we interact with photorealistic digital content that looks exactly like real life - it is so immersive that the distinction between "real" and "digital" is less important than the experience itself. In this way, hyperreality is an extension of reality, not just a lower-resolution "digital version."
Tom Graham is CEO and co-founder of Metaphysic, and developer of Every Anyone, an AI platform for creating NFT-based hyperreal avatars and Metaverse data management. This article is part of "Metaverse Week.
The way AI can leverage biometric facial and voice data - and our preferences revealed in that data - will not only replicate our preferred physical environments online, but transform them. This scenario is essentially about building tools that help us take back control of our digital lives and experiences.
The metaverse promises that everything from work meetings to parent-teacher conversations will take place in photorealistic virtual worlds that look just like our homes, schools and offices. We will interact with each other as embodied photorealistic avatars. There will also be game worlds and fictional universes - we can be whoever or whatever we want.
As this hyperreal metaverse evolves and our avatars seamlessly merge with our real lives, we must remain in control. We must protect our identities and have the deeply personal biometric data used by AI models to create and animate our lifelike avatars.
Web 3 adds a user-centric ownership layer to the existing "read/write" Internet. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will play a critical role in enabling more realistic forms of content participation and lead to the creation of new digital economies. Ultimately, the Web 3 Internet will become "read/write/ownership." NFTs and blockchain technologies are essential elements of the tech stack that will enable ordinary people to create and own their own hyperreal synthetic avatars in the metaverse.
In the future, everyone will have an NFT in their wallet linked to their sensitive biometric data stored offline. These NFTs will form the basis of our permanent virtual identities. We will sign into experiences like "3D Immersive Zoom" and "Hyperreal FIFA 2025" with our wallets, just as we use "Sign in with Google" today.
However, this is a radical departure from the relationship people have with their data in Web 2 paradigms. The blockchain will allow users to verify their identity in the real world, control access to their biometric data, and give consent to how it is presented in hyperreal content.
This also allows us to directly participate in a new wave of virtual economies. For example, we will be able to track our participation in virtual events and be compensated both for the data we create online and for a portion of the advertising revenue or brand activations we enable through our participation in a Metaverse experience.
We will also be able to contribute our personal data sets to create more representative and realistic virtual worlds. If we become part of a content experience, it is only reasonable that we share in its financial benefits. This is the power of Web 3.
The new data ownership
Since the dawn of the Internet, we have lost control of our data in two ways: first gradually, then suddenly. For a long time, the only people concerned about data ownership were activists who watched in horror as companies set up toll booths on the information superhighway and began to extract value from individuals' personal data.
With the advent of social media and Web 2, it was impossible to ignore how Big Tech was amassing unimaginable amounts of personal data, often without our knowledge or truly informed consent. Who reads terms and conditions anyway?
For many people, giving up control of their data is an easy decision. The Internet services and products we use every day are endlessly convenient, and our personal data is the price of entry. Web 3 offers us the ability to claim our hyperreal virtual identities without having to cede our personal data to centralized third party platforms.
There are still many data security issues to be addressed in Web 3, such as the ability to recover our identities if we lose our keys. It is equally important that the high-resolution biometric data on which personal avatars are based does not end up in the hands of any company or developer developing virtual experiences in the metaverse.
The concept of extending our individual sovereignty into virtual space without being tied to corporations is a powerful idea.
If the metaverse is to become a seamless extension of physical reality, we must enable permanent, wearable versions of our virtual selves. In the real world, we don't have to change our identity when we go shopping, to the office, or to a friend's party, and so it should be in the metaverse.
Even though we have multiple versions of our hyperreal avatar that allow us to play with our identities, such as creating younger versions of ourselves or portraying ourselves as a different gender, ultimately these hyperreal creative permutations are all based on our real-world data, personalities, and desires.
If we store our personal data securely in NFTs, we are able to transport this information across virtual spaces in the metaverse. At the same time, NFTs give the user complete control over when and how this personal data is used by third parties. We can prove in any context that we are who we say we are without having to reveal sensitive personal information first.
Hyperreal NFTs like this can become a decentralized and user-driven identity verification platform integrated into the fabric of the metaverse.
This transition to hyperreality is already underway. Those working to secure personal data with NFTs are setting the stage for a metaverse in which our virtual selves have all the qualities we value in our flesh-and-blood identities. Indeed, our physical selves are non-fungible, and under ideal conditions we have control over our bodies and our actions. Now we finally have the technology that allows ordinary people to protect and control who they are and what they do in the metaverse.
But as the metaverse becomes more realistic through technological advances, we need to think more about who we are "becoming" on an Internet that looks and feels like reality. The hyperreal metaverse may be more Web 3.1 than Web 3.0 - explained as the emergence of a "read/write/own/be" Internet.
If the digital worlds we inhabit look exactly as if they were captured on location with a camera, and are populated with photorealistic versions of ourselves and our loved ones, is it still the Internet?
Or are we creating a seamless extension of reality that forces us to be "ourselves" beyond the confines of the physical world? Or are we creating something that is a little more than ourselves?
More from CoinDesk's "Metaverse Week.
- Using crypto to bring the Metaverse into reality | Janine Yorio & Zach Hungate
- How the Metaverse could be a game-changer for NFT gaming | David Z Morris
- Metaverse real estate - the next big thing or the next big bummer? | Jeff Wilser
- The Metaverse will make gamers of us all | Janine Yorio & Zach Hungate