AI will soon get whatever you say

We must keep our eyes sharp so as not to miss the bus on the metaverse and other phenomenal technologies of our age.

Suh Kyoung-ho

The author is an editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo. “Metaverse? Isn’t it just a passing fad?” retorted the CEO of an IT company two years ago when asked on all the hype over the emerging immersive technology. Internet platforms and IT companies had been raving over the new tech buzzword dubbed to be the next big thing after the internet. The CEO has recently resigned from the company. Could his skepticism on metaverse be right?

Metaverse Expo 2023 was held in COEX, Seoul in mid-June. A visitor experiencing a roller-coaster ride with a virtual reality (VR) headset shrieked as if riding the real thing. A kid wearing a boxing gear and VR headset threw fists in the air in a virtual sparring. Venture company Tround showcased the “sound chair” offering extended reality (XR) through a 360-degree surround system and wave vibrator. Watching a film on the chair heightened the immersive experience.

What attracted the biggest crowd was the booth of Caliverse, a subsidiary of Lotte Data Communication. It demonstrated a hyper-realistic metaverse through 3D monitor and VR headset, enabling various social and cultural activities without any physical restraint. The 3D monitor with advanced camera sensors allows the user to enjoy 3D content without putting on a special gear. With a VR headset on, the girl idol group performs directly looking at me as if they were putting on a show just for me.

Apple’s Vision Pro to enlarge the XR market Apple Vision Pro that made a splash at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) earlier in June — promising an iPhone-like sensation through the “spatial computer” feature for mixed reality experience when it is released early next year — did not join the Expo 2023 at COEX. The goggle-like VR device is designed to enable all the features in MacBook and iPhone in 3D virtual space. Despite the jaw-dropping price tag of $3,499, the upcoming device has been much awaited by tech-gear savants with soaring expectations for the new gadget from Apple.

Vision Pro was also a hot topic during the lectures on the sidelines of the COEX exhibition. Kim Ji-hyun, vice president of SK Research Institute for SUPEX Management, found the Vison Pro’s superiority in user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) with its ability to use the eye as the cursor and the hands as the mouse for comfortable and dimensional user experience. Although the new device is yet to hit the market next year, Apple has already moved onto developing its second version. “Apple’s new devices tend to hit the jackpot from the third generation, as proven with its iPhone series. Its success drew competitors like the Samsung Electronics into the smartphone market, widening the market and making the price more affordable. Vision Pro will likely have the same impact,” he said.

The hype over metaverse has somewhat waned. Some even forgot about augmented reality upon the rise of the generative AI applications like ChapGPT. Skepticism deepened when demand over metaverse contents stayed stagnant while physical travels were restrained during the pandemic period. Big-tech companies are withdrawing or streamlining related business, as reported by the Wall Street Journal in March. For instance, Walt Disney and Microsoft shut down their metaverse division or platform, not to mention Mark Zuckerberg who renamed Facebook as Meta Platforms signaled the company was shifting focus more on artificial intelligence.

But metaverse is not receding Matthew Ball — who authored “The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything” and influenced Zuckerberg to rebrand Facebook as Meta — wrote in the preface to the Korean version of his book that the exaggerated excitement over metaverse has subsided in 2023. But he said this should not be mistaken for a retreat or receding in the technology. He argues metaverse is still evolving and that the AI solutions’ advance through the rapid ascension in language-learning model chatbots and generative art platform, generative environment engine, and digital humans all prove the strides in the metaverse technology.

Experts at the Coex convention all agreed on the potential synergy between metaverse and AI technologies. In his lecture on “The metaverse rises, giving engine to the GPT,” Lee Seung-hwan of Software Policy & Research Institute said that generative AI evolution was changing the production process of metaverse. Users now can create a metaverse they want through the tools facilitating text-to-metaverse and image-to-3D conversions by using prompters. Interaction using ChatGPT to move avatars and robots has also become easier. Simply put, AI technology is accelerating the evolution of the metaverse.

Kim of SK offered a more detailed vision. “Personal voice assistants like Jarvis could be the super app on the metaverse. ChatGPT with voice assistance capacity like Jarvis would be ideal on the metaverse,” he said. Jarvis is the AI butler for Tony Stark in the movie “Iron Man.” “The time will come when our AI assistant can understand whatever you say,” he said. He summed up that metaverse will bring the third wave of seismic change on the internet ecosystem after the web and mobile.

Korea to give birth to metaverse stars Ball, the expert on metaverse, projected that a company going beyond the level of the Silicon Valley can appear in South Korea in 10 years, as the country is mostly self-sufficient in internet technology, services and equipment, “which is very rare across the world.” He could have been more generous on the preface for Korean readers, but his bullish outlook can be morale-boosting for Korean venture companies.

While highly evaluating Korea’s metaverse competitiveness, he also warned about the possibility of the tech competition only getting fiercer, as “there always have been countless losers behind a very few great winners in the history of technology.”

Visitors to Metaverse Expo 2023 at Coex, Gangnam, southern Seoul experience advanced virtual reality on June 14. The next Metaverse Expo will be held from June 26 to 28, 2024. [NEWS1]

“If virtual assets come to overwhelm assets in the real world, enormous confusion and transition could sweep across the economy and society. There could be more losses than gains in the early stage. As we have seen with the internet and smartphone, there is no mercy or emotion in technology innovation. Change can be that ruthless. But a bus that passed the stop does not return to pick up the late passenger no matter what reason there may be,” Ball warned. We must keep our eyes sharp so as not to miss the bus on the metaverse and other phenomenal technologies of our age.