We're building castles in the clouds, folks. Glittering, pixelated palaces pledge a new utopia in which our every form can easily interchange. In this universe, imagination is unlimited, and your dog can nearly transform into you. What if the AI systems, which we’ve built to authenticate identity in cyberspaces, can’t distinguish your thoughtfully curated avatar’s hand from Fido’s %*@! paw print? And it does indeed raise serious questions about trust and authenticity in our online interactions.

Is Your Digital Self Truly You?

The promise of the metaverse, at least in part, is giving control of that identity back to users. It’s up to you to decide who you are and who you will be. You can be more innovative and creative, and engage with people in more fun, dynamic ways. This utopian vision collapses quicker than a bad NFT in the event that the moves to identity verification are built on a shaky basis. Right now, it is flawed.

Think about it. We're entrusting AI with the keys to our digital kingdom, expecting it to differentiate between legitimate users and sophisticated synthetic identities. AI can be extremely deceived by a few misleading images or a well-conceived prompt. This casts doubt on its capacity to defend against malicious actors. It would be like hiring a bouncer who couldn’t tell a velvet rope from a garden hose. Indeed, the folly of false security is usually more harmful than the absence of security.

I’ve long been deeply involved in the crafts of graphic novels, and, more recently, the creation of narrative possibilities offered by blockchain technology. Both of these disciplines address identity in fascinating and different ways. One is concerned with developing ability to produce characters, and the other with proving who owns what. What I’ve taught is that trust comes first. Building trust necessitates verification that cuts deeper than the shallow, surface analysis.

More Bots Than Humans – A Security Nightmare

Here's where things get truly unsettling. And we’re not simply referring to a handful of naughty avatars scheming to steal cupcakes from other avatars. The impending development of agentic AI unavoidably brings us to the edge of an explosion of non-human identities. Bots, agents, automated systems – these guys are breeding faster than you can say “crypto kitties,” ready to massively exceed human users in the metaverse.

Today, AI is being hailed as the answer to controlling this flood of identities. Access reviews, privilege scoring, onboarding – all things we were promised wouldn’t take this much effort due to our new silicon overlords. Automating a deeply inequitable, inefficient system with AI is like putting a turbocharger on a car that already has a flat tire. You'll just crash faster.

Before we give AI the power to police our digital communities, we have to solve identity verification’s fatal design flaws. That starts with the understanding that AI isn’t magic. It's software. Software that can’t be treated like a toaster, requiring validation, user input understanding, documented behavior and, vitally, ongoing output surveillance.

Pre-deployment testing is not enough. The metaverse is a big, fundamental, open-ended experiment, learning and changing as it goes. AI systems should be subject to ongoing evaluations to test for performance drift, new vulnerabilities, and the ongoing risk of adversarial attacks.

Whose Metaverse Is It, Anyway?

This isn’t just a technical issue. It’s an equity issue. Meta and Microsoft are the two dominant competitors to the metaverse. In the process, they are increasingly consolidating control over our digital identities. Their dependence on potentially biased AI systems might deepen current inequalities even further.

Imagine a future in which an AI algorithm determines who can access virtual spaces and basic services. In this imagined world, the algorithm is dangerously biased, easily duped, and completely incompetent. That’s not the kind of future I want to see.

We should be calling for accountability and demand transparency from these private companies. We need to know how they're using AI to verify identities, what data they're collecting, and what safeguards they have in place to prevent abuse. We need to push for the development of decentralized identity solutions. These user-centric features give people more choice and tools to shape their own online identities.

We're at a critical juncture. We can decide to accept AI uncritically as our new technological messiah. Or, we can advocate for the responsible implementation of AI with rigorous oversight and a commitment to protecting individual rights. The choice is ours. If we don't act now, we risk building a metaverse where identity is a commodity, privacy is an illusion, and a dog's paw is as good as your word. That is not the future I signed up for. I doubt you did either.

  • Stolen Assets: Your virtual land, your digital art, your hard-earned cryptocurrency – all vulnerable to theft if your identity can be easily impersonated.
  • Social Disruption: Malicious actors using synthetic identities to spread misinformation, harass other users, or disrupt virtual communities.
  • Economic Instability: The rise of AI-driven scams and fraud undermining trust in the metaverse economy.

Let’s repair that bad foundation and only then let’s go ahead and build the important new skyscraper. Now is the time to build a more inclusive metaverse—one where everyone can truly feel safe and free in their identity. We’ll applaud creativity and ensure that everybody gets a place at the table—even Fido, provided he shows up with his authentic self!

Let's fix the foundation before we build the skyscraper. Let's ensure that the metaverse is a space where identity is secure, creativity is celebrated, and everyone has a seat at the table – even Fido, as long as he brings his real self.