The Rise of 6G
In the 2030s, the world has entered a new paradigm of wireless communication. The sixth generation (6G) of mobile communication is widespread globally and offers data speeds that are 100 times faster than 4G LTE networks and five times faster than 5G networks (Alsharif et al., 2020). The mobile ultra-broadband of 6G has achieved terabits-per-second wireless transmissions and fuels the development of applications whose bandwidth requirements were not met by 5G such as holography and mixed reality (Zhang et al., 2019). Super Internet-of-Things (Super IoT) comes along with 6G and provides hyper-connected experiences to every corner of consumers’ life (ibid); personal data is constantly being collected and transmitted. On the other hand, the mass increase in computing power allow some technology bottlenecks to be unblocked. For example, increasingly realistic computer-generated imagery (CGI) is finally indistinguishable from real-world objects by human eyes. The rendering of CGI human characters reaches the level of high fidelity that is claimed to be crossing the uncanny valley. Additionally, the development of sophistificated NLP has also had a breakthrough; neural language models finally pass the Turing Test and are widely applied in different applications across industry.
Crossing the Uncanny Valley
With the rise in quality of CGI and NLP technologies, realistic and interactive virtual influencers and cyber models shine on the stage of social media platforms. Followers can interact with the virtual influencers by commenting on their posts, chatting with them in messaging channels, and even through newly developed holographic applications and mixed reality technology. Mixed reality, sometimes referred to as hybrid reality, merges real and virtual worlds and produces new environments and visualizations where virtual influencers and physical humans can coexist and interact in real time (Flavián et al., 2019). The interactive experience with virtual characters has never been this eloquent and mesmerizing. High engagement rates lead to a high volume of interactions, and massive amounts of data are collected from their followers. The data not only teaches the virtual influencers how to accurately portray the “ideal” to their followers, but also influences their ideas of “ideal”. The continual development and pioneering tech surrounding virtual realism is promising and continues to have strong corporate support.
Seeing Will No Longer be Believing
The combination of CGI and AI in virtual humans, leading to their increasing accessibility, is both exciting and concerning. As technology advances in CGI are made, a key requirement is to reduce the amount of hand-editing that is needed in the current process. In the future, anybody can produce content for little or no cost to a degree of fidelity that is only possible for Hollywood studios in 2020. This hints at a future in which all of us can produce virtual humans in astonishing fidelity and place them into digital worlds with unparalleled levels of detail (Dormehl, 2019). Moreover, since the virtual characters can be created with any appearance and given any personality, we may see a change in diversity and representation in all industries that involve virtual influencers. On the other hand, negative outcomes will come along. The democratized access to sophisticated technology may lead to abusive use in creating fake personas who act as a compelling tool for spreading disinformation. This is already happening in 2020, where deepfakes or synthetic media are created to mislead viewers with highly realistic digital content (Tolosana et al., 2020). In the 2030s, it will be even harder to distinguish the fake from the real. Seeing will no longer be believing. The ability to generate realistic imagery at scale will have a serious impact on how modern societies think about evidence and trust. Moreover, the freedom to create diverse personas for virtual influencers will play to companies’ advantage by appealing to different audience segments. Rather than hiring one influencer that is appealing to multiple audience segments, companies can create multiple virtual influencers with whom all audience segments can identify themselves — thus resulting in exploitation of audiences in the name of diversity.
Exploitation of Human Emotions
These probable negative outcomes urge discussions on the surrounding ethical issues. The realism of virtual characters is a breeding ground for deceptive practices. For example, virtual influencers may be portrayed as real humans who have their own agency, allowing the company to stay behind the curtain. Moreover, when registering an account, the personal information of a virtual influencer is fabricated, and thus within a legal grey zone, considering they are designed for profit-making. Putting aside the realism of the virtual influencers that can fool the human brain, humans have been known to form emotional attachments to fictional characters (Keen, 2006). Unlike the fictional characters in books or movies that have their destiny set, or characters in video games that are pre-programmed, virtual influencers’ personas are constantly changing with the goal to engage. In the future, the amount of personal data transmitting online through our interactions on social media platforms and the advancement of data analytic techniques will permit companies to know us even better—which restaurants we go to, who our best friends are, which styles we dress in, what news stories catch our eyes, and many more details like our mood, taste, and even values and worldviews. The virtual influencers are then constantly evolving based on the personal data they are fed. Therefore, how they dress, how they speak, which events they attend, who they are friends with, and their biological features—every aspect of their creation is designed to win an emotional response that leads to engagements. The calculated display of characters is clearly an exploitation of human emotions.
In preferable scenarios, policies and regulations are made to impose transparency in the usage of virtual influencers. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter have gradually implemented business accounts that are separated from personal accounts. However, it is evident that they should also start separating real human accounts from virtual character accounts, and they should make it mandatory to reveal the companies they are representing.
Contributors
Thank you Paul Hodgetts, Hidaya Ismail, Diego Mamanche Castellanos and Thomas William Rosenthal for sharing your ideas. Thank you Thomas William Rosenthal and Carli for reviewing and editing.
References
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