Mark van Rijmenam, author of “Step Into The Metaverse: How the Immersive Internet Will Unlock a Trillion-Dollar Social Economy,” has a lot of concerns about metaverse advertising. One of them is users that could clone actual people and pass themselves off. “We know deepfakes, where we can have Queen Elizabeth, Obama or Zelensky saying something, made with real footage. Right now, I’m in the process of creating an exact digital replica of myself, and if I can do it, so can someone trying to be a fake ‘me.’ But I’m not a world leader or CEO. Bots will be a humongous problem,” he told me.
The AI company Hour One is already creating synthetic characters based on real life people. Questions abound: will people be informed when they are dealing with a bot, and what will they try to sell us, or take from us?
Hannah Taylor, Partner and Co-Chair of the Blockchain and Advertising Groups at Frankfurt, Kurnit, Klein & Selz informed me that California has instituted a bot law the effects of which are already visible. “You see this a lot in the chatbot context, like in an airline portal, where they usually say something like, ‘Hi, I’m Hannah, a digital assistant here to help you.’ It’s required by law in certain contexts to disclose that you are not human.” But what if you don’t disclose that you’re a bot? Are we going to have Blade Runners patrolling the metaverse in trench coats?
Van Rijmenam brought up another example: Say there’s a comedy show in the metaverse, and the comedian is wearing a Hugo Boss jacket. If the comedian earns affiliate money to wear (and drive potential buyers to) that jacket, then when an avatar clicks on it, a link would appear to purchase it. CGI influencers in the metaverse actually aren’t new: Lil Miquela, Shudu and Imma have already made deals with Calvin Klein, Valentino and Dior.
“People may think,” Taylor said, “‘we’ll create virtual influencers and because they’re not human, we’ll be able to get away with new stuff.’ And the law says, ‘no.’ CGI influencers raise the same issues. It’s just that the law is a tortoise and tech is a hare, and we as lawyers are left to apply the law of other contexts to this new universe.”
How will synthetic people disclose their intentions? Sychov thinks they’ll announce themselves in the beginning of their dialogue but believes that any company taking themselves seriously will have real humans greeting visitors. Historian Ed Timke wonders if bots or influencers should have halos or money signs, the Web3 equivalents of a #sponsoredpost.
