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A chilling academic study was published earlier this year by researchers at Lancaster University and UC Berkeley. Using a sophisticated form of AI known as a GAN (Generative Adversarial Network), they created artificial human faces (i.e. photorealistic fakes) and showed these fakes to hundreds of human subjects, along with a mix of real faces. They found that this type of AI technology had become so effective, we humans could no longer tell the difference between real people and virtual people (or “weapels” as I call them).
And that wasn’t his most frightening discovery.
You see, they asked their test subjects to rate the “trustworthiness” of each face and found that consumers found AI-generated faces to be significantly more trustworthy than real faces. As I described in a recent academic paper, this result makes it highly likely that advertisers will increasingly use AI-generated ones in place of human actors and models. This is because working with virtual people will be cheaper and faster, and if they are perceived to be more trustworthy, they will also be more persuasive.
It’s a troubling direction for print and video ads, but it’s downright terrifying when we see the new forms of advertising that the metaverse will soon emerge. As consumers spend more time in virtual and augmented worlds, digital advertising will transform from simple images and videos to AI-powered virtual ones that engage us in promotional conversations.
Armed with an exhaustive database of personal information about our behavior and interests, these “AI-powered conversational agents” will be deeply effective advocates for any messages that are paid by third parties to deliver them. . And if this technology is not regulated, these AI agents will also track our emotions in real time, monitoring our facial expressions and vocal changes so that they can optimize their interaction strategy (i.e. their sales pitch) to maximize their motivational effect.
While this alludes to a somewhat dystopian metaverse, these AI-powered propaganda avatars would be a legitimate use of virtual people. But what about fraudulent uses?
This brings me to the topic of identity theft.
In a recent Microsoft blog post by executive VP Charlie Bell, he said that in Metaverse fraud and phishing attacks “can come from a familiar face literally like an avatar that impersonates your co-worker.” I completely agree. In fact, I worry that the ability to hijack or duplicate avatars could destabilize our sense of identity, leaving us forever unsure whether the people we’re talking to are individuals we know. or are quality fake.
To accurately replicate the look and sound of a person in the metaverse is often referred to as creating a “digital twin”. Earlier this year, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Hong gave a keynote speech using a cartoonish digital twin. He added that fidelity will grow rapidly in the coming years as well as the ability of AI engines to autonomously control your avatar so you can be in multiple locations at once. Yes, digital twins are coming.
That’s why we need to prepare for what we call the “evil twin” – your (or people you know and trust) used against you for fraudulent purposes. , exact virtual replicas of their form, sound and mannerisms. This form of identity theft will take place in the metaverse, as it is a direct amalgamation of existing technologies developed for deep-fakes, voice emulation, digital-twining and AI-powered avatars.
And thugs can be quite elaborate. According to Bell, bad actors can lure you into a fake virtual bank, with a fraudulent teller asking you for your information. Or fraudsters bent on corporate espionage might invite you to a fake meeting in a conference room that looks like the virtual conference room you’ve always used. From there, you will leave confidential information to unknown third parties without even realizing it.
Personally, I suspect fraudsters wouldn’t need to elaborate this. After all, encountering a familiar face that looks, sounds and acts like someone you know is a powerful tool in itself. This means that the Metaverse platform requires equally powerful authentication technologies that verify whether we are interacting with a real person (or their authorized twin) and No An evil twin who was deceitfully positioned to deceive us. If platforms don’t address this issue quickly, the metaverse could collapse under an avalanche of deception and identity theft.
Whether you’re waiting for the metaverse or not, the major platforms are on our way. And because the technologies of virtual reality and augmented reality are designed to fool the senses, these platforms will skillfully blur the boundaries between the real and the fabricated. When used by bad actors, such abilities would become increasingly dangerous. This is why the emphasis on tighter security is in the interest of everyone, consumers and corporations alike. The alternative would be a metaverse fraught with massive fraud that could result in it never recovering.
Louis Rosenberg, PhD, is the CEO of Consensus AI and a leader in VR, AR and AI.
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