The Metaverse is Mark Zuckerberg’s number one priority. The leader was even renamed son Meta company to prove seriousness son ambition. First of all, we recall that this is the embodied Internet, to which on can be accessed through a virtual reality headset. Applications are numerous, from video games to e-commerce, work and sports.
Deepfakes at the service of manipulation?
However, the development of this concept is not without criticism. The final warning comes from Rand Waltzman, a senior computer scientist at the RAND Research Institute. According to the latter, technologies Deepfakes can be used in the metaverse for manipulation. The researcher gives an example of a political speech delivered in this virtual world. While each user thinks to see the same view of the last one, son the avatar is slightly modified to partially resemble him. The effect here will be specific, and each term public would appreciate this politician more than in the real world. Why ? According to several experiments conducted by researchers at Stanford University, slightly changing the facial features of an unknown politician to resemble a voter leads them to more positively evaluate the speaker. And Rand Waltzman warns: “Emotional manipulation is at the heart of all deception. Virtual reality environments, such as the Facebook Metaverse (hereinafter referred to as the Meta), will allow the psychological and emotional manipulation of its users at a level unimaginable in today’s media. To avoid the worst, he advocates two specific measures. First, it would be necessary to make a full assessment of the various studies done in psychology on this issue and on the impact of virtual reality. Preliminary work is also needed on how it can be used for malicious purposes. He also calls for the development technologies which would allow detection of the use of these manipulation techniques.
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