Weekly Metaverse #123: New hardware, it's a-comin'!
And an AI rapper rises and falls in the span of a week
Digital Rapper Flip Flop
Here’s a fun couple of headlines to start us off!
August 17: Capitol Records signs AI-powered virtual rapper, FN Meka
August 23: Capitol Drops ‘Virtual Rapper’ FN Meka After Backlash Over Stereotypes
We’re in the future, and the future is absurd. They clearly should have started with a virtual generic white dude pop star - nobody’s gonna protest if AI starts taking over Bieber’s turf.
New Hardware for Working in the Metaverse
Big news this week, with Zuck announcing “For the next device that’s coming out in October, there’s a few big features.” We here at Weekly Metaverse, along with the rest of the world, are taking that “next device” to be the long-awaited Project Cambria headset.
It’ll apparently be able to capture your facial expressions as well as where your eyes are pointed and translate those things to your avatar. While that’ll be nice to have for a lot of social and gaming use cases, I think it’ll really make a difference for business. The more that interactions in the metaverse can bring in body language and other physical context that’s typically lost online, the more useful they’ll be for business meetings.
This all couldn’t come at a better time - with Apple employees as the latest to push back on going into the office, it’s clear that remote work is here to stay, and tools like these have the chance to make it better and more collaborative. They may even help to pull some of the remote-work-resistant companies along, and when companies go remote that democratizes work geographically and reduces emissions at the same time. Maybe Meta will do some good for once!
Related: Petaluma Adtech Startup Builds Remote Culture in the Metaverse
And on the AR side of things, an announcement that got a bit less coverage - Vuzix unveiled their Blade 2 AR glasses. These are serious enterprise tools, designed to be used in factories, out in the field and anywhere in between. They can send information back to workers in the office plus allow those folks in the office to communicate back via sound and AR overlays.
This is a really powerful way to instantly make your employees more knowledgeable and prepared without additional training. Before, if there were repairs needed in the field that required a specialist, that meant you had to get that specialist out to where the repairs needed to happen. Now, you can send someone with basic training out, and your specialist can sit at home in their PJs and provide detailed instructions in real-time, while observing the person in the field.
Beyond adding convenience (and reducing carbon emissions), this also has the opportunity to be incredibly useful in crisis situations. When natural disasters hit, having the chance to bring experts in virtually may very well save lives. Next time someone says the metaverse is silly videogames, remind them of that.
The News
Meta officially rolls out its new metaverse ID system: Some VR lovers/Meta haters seem to be really excited by this, and I don’t get why. You don’t have to have a Facebook account, but you have to create a new Meta account… yay privacy or something?
Taco Bell is hosting a wedding in the metaverse: I’m really just including this because I wanted to get married at the Taco Bell Chapel in Vegas, but my wife wouldn’t do it, and I’m still salty about it. I gave up that dream without too much of a fight because I’m not a total idiot and want to have a happy marriage that does not revolve around my stupid whims, but still, it could’ve been great.
Metaverse avatar platform Ready Player Me raises $56M led by a16z: And they’re psyched that Zuckerberg posted that terrible screenshot of his avatar head at the perfect time for this announcement.
Snoop Dogg and Eminem to enter the metaverse for VMAs performance: I bet someone at the VMAs was like, “Hey we should lean into this metaverse thing all the way and have FN Meka perform,” and they’re super glad that idea didn’t work out.
How many consumers are shopping in virtual reality and what can it offer them?: The World Economic Forum took a look at VR uses and found that, rather surprisingly, about a third of people who use VR use it for shopping.
Vatican's Art, Content to be Housed in VR and NFT Gallery: The Vatican’s making NFTs of its art and displaying them in VR. This is meaningfully different from just displaying high-resolution, non-NFT pictures of their art for reasons that are mysterious and cannot be understood through reason, only faith.