Artificial Intelligence in the Metaverse: Bridging the Virtual and Real

The Metaverse is a powerful concept in and of itself. Consider how powerful it can be when the problem-solving capabilities of AI are included in. The Metaverse will provide an interactive environment in which businesses can construct virtual reality environments with dynamic life-like components. AI’s relevance to company growth and profitability is obvious as a technology. According to a McKinsey survey, at least 22 percent of enterprises reported a 5 percent improvement in EBIT due to AI. AI is proving to be one of the cornerstones upon which the metaverse will be built. Starting with user-generated data processing and progressing to generative AI models that produce lifelike virtual settings and avatars that resemble users, as well as the capacity to recognize body gestures and so make the metaverse experience more natural.

However, AI will breathe new life into the digital characters that inhabit virtual worlds, such as non-human characters and personal assistants, and will allow everyone to communicate in their native language by simultaneously translating speech. As long as we don’t mind an intrusive AI listening to all our conversations and judging our every move, artificial intelligence could help create increasingly engaging and user-friendly experiences to maximize activity and engagement time, as is the case in social networks today, and could act as a watchdog, stopping harassment before it even happens.

A New World of Possibilities

We can consider several possibilities by merging the capabilities of AI and the Metaverse. Many expensive real-world studies, for example, can be carried out in the Metaverse at a lower cost while sticking to rigorous timeframes to collect more data. This important data can be used to feed and train AI algorithms that will help businesses make better decisions. Similarly, any potential recommendations from AI solutions can be tested in a Metaverse with minimal risk before being deployed in the actual world. In the Metaverse, AI can also assist in hyper-personalizing enterprises.

Let’s look at a few prospective use cases from various industries and how they can change the future landscape of daily life:

Manufacturing

There are fascinating use cases in a Metaverse setting. For example, simulations that are thought too difficult to do in real-world industrial conditions can be carried out easily in a Digital Twin facility. Similarly, in a Metaverse environment, production line robots or warehouse robots can be educated and retrained until they are flawless in handling a procedure such as a production schedule that is difficult to mimic in a real factory. The robots can be educated within the Digital Twin, and the trained models can then be imported into the actual robots by the manufacturer. A product producer can also test the sensor gear in a digital replica of the factory under harsh conditions such as very high RPM for lengthy periods of time with periodic breaks, observing the equipment’s breaking points. The observations from these test sessions can subsequently be used by the manufacturer to fine-tune predictive maintenance models and reduce unscheduled downtime. These are only a few of the possibilities that can be explored in the manufacturing space by integrating AI with the Metaverse.

Healthcare

A Metaverse environment can be used to evaluate the performance of a multi-specialty hospital under various criteria and settings. The combination of AI with Metaverse can perform wonders, from directing the proper doctor or caregiver to the right patient to helping frontline employees to direct their energy more efficiently.

Simulation of Traffic

Running a highly effective transportation system is one of the most typical issues for modern cities. In the Metaverse, traffic circumstances can be simulated, and AI can optimize traffic procedures and determine how best traffic can be re-routed to avoid congestion. The Metaverse is nearing completion. Organizations can generate transformational commercial impact from both the actual world and the new virtual world by merging AI and the Metaverse. These are some of my thoughts on how AI and the Metaverse can aid in the resolution of real-world problems. The combined potential of AI and Metaverse in the Manufacturing, Retail, Healthcare, and Smart City sectors is enormous.

Smart Cities

Any new development in a proposed smart city can be recreated in the city’s Digital Twin to assess the short- and long-term impact on various ecosystems (utilities, traffic, waste management, etc.). The structural integrity of the buildings or structures can be determined. Disasters can also be risk-free simulated to assess their impact. These simulations can be used to train AI algorithms that can be utilized to improve the city based on various criteria.

Retail

To drive user experience and conversion in a Metaverse retail environment, AI can determine which products to present (dynamic user-level personalization), how to present those products (dynamic store layout, planograms, number of product facings), and what prices or promotions to respective products (user-level price recommendation engine). The Metaverse environment’s insights can be utilized to bring learning and customer insights back into real-world stores. Simultaneously, physical store AI engines can learn from augmented data resulting from client preferences exhibited in metaverse stores. Metaverse settings can also be utilized to create a Digital Twin of a retail location. The Digital Twin can be used to not only test customer reactions to shop layouts, but also to assess customer traffic patterns in order to plan store associate placement and predict shelf stock-outs in real-time.