The Role of AI When Realities Collide

Over the last few years, more and more tech-generated realities are popping into existence. We have transcended from the physical world into the digital world, and now we have virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and the metaverse to contend with. The emergence of these realities has and will generate a whole lot of data, and this data is like candy when it comes to AI.

Eleanor Wright, COO at TelWAI – “The Role of AI When Realities Collide” Image by pikisuperstar on Freepik

As we all know, our online activity is mined to oblivion for monetization. Your google searches, Meta likes, and TikTok views are all fed into AI systems built by big data companies for the purpose of tempting you into buying something you probably won’t use and don’t need.

For big tech, however, the online world was not enough, and thus, the crusade to create new realities for our virtual selves to reside in began. From this crusade, virtual reality sprung into existence, pioneered by the likes of Ultimate Display and Oculus. This reality allows us to cognitively step out of the physical world as we know it and consume content in new ways. Once virtual reality became an industry hot topic, augmented reality and mixed reality applications rapidly followed.

The emergence of these realities provides new routes of communication in our day-to-day lives. From social to gaming and even into our business operations. Although we might not see our next company day taking place in the metaverse, it’s fair to assume Microsoft is developing its own reality to level up our business functions. It’s the creation of these new routes of communication that get advertising agencies excited. The sooner these agencies jump on these new forms of communications that demonstrate an upward trajectory in new users, the better their customer’s dollar is spent.

So, what’s the role of AI when these realities collide?

Firstly, whatever actions you make in these virtual realities will be harvested for AI. The games you play, the communities you build, and the time you spend in the virtual world will form yet more datasets for AI. Enabling advertising agencies to learn more about you and how and where to garner your attention. It is at this point that the convergence begins.

The unification of AI operating across these realities opens up a new world of advertising, personalization, and monitorization. Digital twins and 3D imaging will enable us to embed physical assets into virtual realities and AI will enable the construction of a personalized “metaverse”. The data harvested online will feed into virtual realities, augmented realities, and mixed realities. The construction of these metaverses will in part be a collaboration of generative AI forming the foundations, digital twins anchoring down our cognitive link to physical reality, and chatbots trying to talk us into purchasing their latest gadgets.

If this future emerges and we choose to spend time in virtual realities Meta has so heavily invested in, AI will have a big role to play. Big brands will harness AI in product development and implement market testing in the virtual world before it goes to manufacturing and market in the physical world. These brands will identify and analyze virtual market segmentations and run what would be costly events in the physical world for a fraction of the price in the virtual world. Musicians will test and tease new music and chatbots may become the next big influencers.

Who knows, one-day neuro link may even become our portal into virtual realities.

About the Author:

Holding a BA in Marketing and an MSc in Business Management, Eleanor Wright has over eleven years of experience working in the surveillance sector across multiple business roles.