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By the end of 2021, the word “metaverse” had generated a lot of hype. The topic was covered by almost every existing media outlet. But what is a metaverse and what is its purpose? Simply put, it is cyberspace, a virtual world that should serve the human connection.
In a metaverse, a person is represented by an avatar, just like in a video game. People are supposed to enter a metaverse using virtual reality headsets and be able to communicate with other people wherever they are physically. It’s the nirvana of a technophile that allows anyone to travel through different 3D environments without leaving the couch. Something science fiction writers have long dreamed of.
Bill Gates predicts that in two to three years, all virtual meetings in metaverses will move from 2D to 3D worlds. Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Tiktok, Apple and other tech giants are planning to invest money and effort in creating their own metaverses. Fashion and beauty brands also seem to be interested in the possibility. JPMorgan estimates the metaverse market at $1 trillion in annual revenue.
Probably one of the closest experiences to what a metaverse should be is Minecraft. Since the beginning of the pandemic, this video game has been used several times as a social meeting place. For example, a South Korean university recently held its entrance ceremony in the game’s virtual space. In the spring of 2020, there was a music festival in Minecraft with the pop star Charli XCX as one of the headliners. In the spring of 2021, Brown University also tried to host music events in Minecraft.
As you can see, the metaverse is meant to be a social experience. The great thing about metaverse is that you can interact, work, play or create art with people who are not in the same physical space as you. You don’t have to be in the same room, city, or even country. It makes the concept of metavers sound like something that can unite the whole world by overcoming the limitations of geographic and political boundaries. But it also feels totally utopian because even in real life we don’t have the superpower of universal understanding. But what if it is indeed possible to achieve it in cyberspace?
Although metaverse is a virtual space, we still approach language and communication there according to the same principles as in the physical world. Speak languages, show emotions, listen, be polite, respectful and empathetic. In general, communication inside and outside the digital reality will be similar in many ways. That’s a good thing, because we don’t have to learn from scratch, but the difficulties are the same.
When we talk about a global cyberspace that should unite humanity, we have to solve the problem of the language barrier. Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s company that owns Facebook and Instagram, plans to develop its own metaverse. Currently, on its social media platforms, Meta collects users from different countries and they mainly stay within their language group without contacting those who speak another language. As of 2019, there were 41 languages officially supported by Facebook. It’s not much, because there are hundreds of languages and dialects, but it’s still a lot.
This does not sound binding as it is clear that in these circumstances users can only communicate and build connections with a limited group of people. It narrows their views and possibilities. At the same time, it would be a tragedy to lose the diversity of languages by choosing only one of them as the universal language. That’s why Metaverse needs AI translation.
AI translation in the metaverse
Over the past decade, machine learning and artificial intelligence have improved by leaps and bounds. In recent years, machine translation has improved significantly, as has speech recognition and other language technology. Now social networks are taking advantage of these breakthroughs through the instant translation of scriptures. You may have noticed this in Facebook posts and comments, or in video captions like those generated automatically by YouTube and Tiktok. But in the metaverse, we need to move on with AI and language. There people will use their voices to speak, as in the physical world. The language barrier problem needs to be solved as seamlessly as possible to make conversations effortless and inclusive.
It seems that Mark Zuckerberg understands the importance too. In February 2022, Meta’s CEO announced that the company was working to build an AI-powered universal speech translator for languages in its metaverse that would work for everyone in the digital world. It will use AI to provide instant translation of many spoken languages. “The ability to communicate with anyone in any language — that’s a superpower that people have always dreamed of and AI is going to deliver that in our lives,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta’s universal speech translator could translate speech to speech directly without transcribing it first. It will make the translation process unnoticeable, making conversations feel more natural. If the project succeeds, people won’t even remember talking to someone who doesn’t understand their language. It will be like a native-to-native conversation. This level of translation cannot be achieved seamlessly in the physical world.
AI translation also helps preserve language diversity, as it motivates people to keep their native language, as it is no longer a barrier to international communication. In the future, it will no longer be necessary to learn a foreign language to be part of the international community.
Of course it takes a lot of work before we get there. Meta’s universal speech translator should learn hundreds of languages and translate from one language to another in real time. The engineers behind the project need to find training data, which is not easy to obtain for many languages that are not popular on the Internet. It is a complex and very ambitious project, but it has enormous potential to bring a lot of good into the world.
Petr Malyukov is a serial IT entrepreneur and CEO/Co-founder of YOUS.
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This post Languages in the Metaverse: Why AI is Critical for Communication in the Brave New World
was original published at “https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/26/languages-in-the-metaverse-why-ai-is-critical-for-communication-in-the-brave-new-world/”