Web3 is crucial for data sovereignty in the metaverse

Wandering around the metaverse is like being in a computer game, but soon, it will look exactly like real life. Unlike some dystopian visions of the metaverse, I don’t think we will give up on reality and stop participating in the physical world. On the other hand, advancements in artificial intelligence content generation will likely lead to a photo-realistic metaverse featuring exact replicas of ourselves and propel us toward a hyper-reality that combines our real-world and digital lives.

Everything we do today on the internet will happen in the metaverse, just with a more engaging visual interface. The virtual content we interact with today is low-resolution and cartoonish, which makes sense because making realistic content is expensive, and gaming makes up the majority of what is currently available in the metaverse. On the other hand, the physical world around us is vivid and rich with high-definition personalized content experiences that run 24/7 — also known as reality.

As technology advances, photo-realistic content in the metaverse will become indistinguishable from physical reality. The driving force behind this change will be powerful AI content generation algorithms that use real-world data to perfectly recreate versions of ourselves inside digital environments. The question is, as the real world extends into virtual space: How will you stop bad actors from controlling the photo-realistic virtual version of yourself?

Related: Web3, NFTs, metaverse: The tools for a truly decentralized future

Will our digital selves be slaves to big corporations?

The growth of the internet and an endless number of amazing digital products and services has created a torrent of personal data that has been collected by large corporations. Every search engine query, comment, like, profile picture, email and purchase is another note in the symphony of our digital identity that only certain corporations and their algorithms can hear. The metaverse takes data collection to a…