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Avatars should always be driven by a user’s intent.

The avatar cannot be used, embodied, or operated by others without the consent of the owner. Avatars should only do things intended by the user. This can be done using sensors, controls, triggers or embodiment in VR. Autonomic or superfluous actions like breathing, subtle idles and reactions to physics simulation are exempt from this guideline.

As technology marches forward, and avatars become more realistic, our ability to simulate movement, actions and voices will also improve. These images above are from some internal experiments on Photo to Avatar tech. We have been working on making it easy to build a digital version of yourself. Right now, we have no safeguards from other people operating or puppeteering specific avatars. Imagine if a friend puts on your VR headset and unintentionally looks like you in front of others. Or how about if a game uses your Avatar as an NPC waving at you as you come in the game. Imagine if a shoe ad shows up on your feed with your avatar wearing the latest sportswear without your consent. It might seem innocuous right now with a low-fidelity avatar… but imagine how unsettling and potentially violating it can feel with a more photorealistic avatar.


I propose we create ways to safeguard against these scenarios.

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Disclaimer

These were written aspirationally. I did not write these guidelines with my employer’s specific context in mind. These were written knowing that there are some aspects of these that we already do really well and some that we are still working on as an industry.

Copyright images used are credited inline. Additional images were generated with Midjourney.

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