The technology craze is a cycle. Some talk about bubbles. The metaverse, this virtual and augmented universe so dear to Mark Zuckerberg, has certainly just come full circle in its own cycle of enthusiasm. It must be said that Meta is well placed to take advantage of the next big technological wave, that of generative artificial intelligence (AI).
Don’t think that Meta is going to change its name. This name was acquired in 2021 when Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, unveiled his futuristic vision: the construction of a metaverse, an immersive digital environment in which, according to him, a billion people would live, work or be entertained no later than 2030.
Given the economic and social weight of Meta, Zuckerberg has drawn many people into his movement. This new digital frontier, a kind of fusion of the real and virtual world, had been hailed by some as the next logical step for the Internet. But, in 2023, Zuckerberg’s dream came crashing down. Even within Meta, the metaverse is no longer popular.
In principle, Meta is expected to invest US$19 billion in its metaverse this year alone. His plan was to invest tens of billions of dollars each year by the end of the decade to make the metaverse real. We wonder if it will last until the end.
smoke screen
Because Zuckerberg has since changed his mind. In the wake of the emergence of generative AIs, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and to explain massive layoffs, he announced a major shift for his company. Starting today, “the most significant investment [de Meta] will be to evolve artificial intelligence and integrate it into absolutely all of our products and services,” he said last March.
Andrew Bosworth, the big boss of the metaverse at Meta, later indicated that the company had stopped presenting its metaverse to its business partners.
Critics who thought Zuckerberg had thrown himself body and soul into the metaverse to create a smokescreen that would overshadow his antics related to the manipulation of personal information and the slowing of adoption by the youngest Internet users of his network social may have been right in the end.
Ironically, experts think Meta might fare better on the AI side than in its metaverse. Its strategy to stand out from Google, OpenAI and the others has been to offer its AI tools to the community open-source. The public is therefore free to use them free of charge. An inexpensive way for Meta to dump R&D efforts on the community of hackers who will want to create their own AI applications from its technology.
Maybe that’s what the company should have done with the metaverse: let its user base build their own virtual universe first. As the saying goes, you don’t pull on a flower because you want it to grow faster…
A three-step collapse
At least three reasons explain the collapse of the metaverse. Users’ distrust of Meta’s handling of personal data hurts the most. The company has been repeatedly singled out for its questionable privacy practices. The promise of the metaverse, which requires even more massive and intrusive data collection, has thus aroused strong mistrust. The public, increasingly aware of the importance of protecting their data, did not buy in.
The technical aspect also weighed in the balance. Building a metaverse requires complex virtual and augmented reality technology. However, even though Meta invests billions in these technologies, the results have not lived up to expectations. Helmets attract few buyers. The apps are poorly put together and unwelcoming. Accessibility, performance, and interactivity issues have held back adoption of the metaverse.
The issue of social equity was also raised. Accessibility to the metaverse requires a high-speed Internet connection and expensive equipment, which excludes a large part of the world’s population. This digital divide has provoked a debate about the ethics of building a space that is only accessible to a privileged minority.
In addition, regulation has played a significant role. Governments, faced with the magnitude of the security, intellectual property and liability challenges posed by the metaverse, have hardened their stance. Laws have been passed to regulate the Metaverse, making Meta’s task even more difficult.
Competition did not harm this failure. Other companies, such as Microsoft or Epic Games, have also invested – with equally mixed success – in building their own metaverse, setting up more open and cooperative environments, which have appealed to users.
Barring a reversal, Meta will pay the price for this dream for a long time, since it is written into its name. It’s a reminder that even the biggest technological dreams can come up against the reality of their implementation. The metaverse outside of Meta is not dead and will likely continue to evolve, but its shape will be different from what Zuckerberg imagined.
Meanwhile, the emergence of generative AIs is kicking off a new cycle of hype, in which all the tech giants who swore the metaverse was going to be the next big thing since sliced bread are jumping in.
Let’s see how long this new cycle will last…