I agree. Slightly amused at the running from one side of the boat to the other. So we're done with the Metaverse now?
(Or maybe the metaverse needs AI bots running around … perhaps scalping tickets or something. In fact I get it though — they're looking for the Next Big Thing — as all big companies are. I even think they're on to it this time. The whole metaverse thing was just so obviously misguided, misspent capital.)
I have a little metaverse experience, and they do relate. If you think of Zuck as a meta strategist, and expand out to where he seems to believe things will be in 20 years, a couple things seem obvious:
* mediated (AR/XR) environments are almost certainly going to be much more popular / used than today, likely in some new device form factors
* Demand for 3D type content and audio and text content will therefore be rising dramatically
Perhaps the least realistic part of Ready Player One was the infinite AAA content floating around; pre gen-AI it was like you’d need 3/4 of the worlds population making digital assets for the other 1/4.
Gen AI changes this, a lot. Avatars, agents, all those are deemed likely to be more compelling as video / imagery gets super cheap to generate as text and audio are now.
The bitter lesson of the AR/XR space is that — hardware is hard. I think it’s a mistake to scoff at something both Apple and Zuck are pouring billions into a priori — even if the markets don’t seem to be working out as expected right now.
I’m writing this on ipadOS beta 26, and the interface tells me that Apple is committing to visionOS type interactions over the next 10 years; the design iconography from the AVP is everywhere now.
Upshot - generative environments, agents and etc. seem likely to me to be big someday — companies with major AR/VR hardware divisions and more data than us don’t seem to be giving up on the space. Practically speaking, a lot of people really want to be able to ‘live’ at least part of the time in a generative reality that they connect to emotionally. I think we’ll see a lot more of it.
All that said, just like there are AI hype waves, and now one that looks like it ‘stuck’, metaverse has these periods. Still an open question if / when one will stick. But I think it’s likely to in the long term.
