In 1993, The New Yorker published a cartoon with the caption, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” The cartoon perfectly captured the anonymous and mysterious nature of the early internet. Even though the internet has come a long way since the early days, the “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” mentality still exists. It is a playground for anonymity. With the ability to create fake names, profiles, and pictures, it’s easy to remain hidden behind a computer screen. This anonymity can be wielded for good or for bad. In some cases, it can be helpful, such as when whistleblowers need to protect their identities. But in other cases, it can be harmful, allowing internet trolls to hide behind their screens and unleash a barrage of hateful comments. While anonymity can be both good and bad, it’s important to be proactive about protecting your digital identity.
In early 2019, funny deep fake videos of Tom Cruise went viral on TikTok. In the videos, Cruise can be seen engaging in activities like playing golf, practicing a magic trick, and even biting into a lollipop. A wide range of users, including famous people, quickly shared them. Many people were unaware that Chris Umé, a visual and AI effects artist based in Bangkok, was the creator of the video. The person who made those videos has turned it into a career by founding a company called Metaphysic to use artificial intelligence to produce hyper realistic videos. While the Tom Cruise video was just a bit of harmless fun, Metaphysic is using its technology for more serious applications. The company is working on creating AI-generated hyperreal videos for use in metaverse. People are worried about the potential misuse of deep fakes as it is regarded as a highly dangerous technology in the metaverse due to the possible threats that it may cause, e.g. identity theft.
The metaverse is a new frontier, and there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to security. Users in a metaverse interact with each other in a variety of ways. The most common form of interaction is avatar-to-avatar, where users communicate and collaborate with each other using their avatars. Even though using an avatar is a convenient way to communicate with others, there is also a higher risk of identity theft and fraud.
Now the question is how to precisely define a digital identity. A collection of data about a person that is available online is called a digital identity. It is possible to create a digital image of a person using this information when it is collected. What qualities do “good” digital identities have then? A good digital ID must be transportable, persistent, private, and personal, according to ID2020, a public-private consortium working to support the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goal. These qualities include that users:
- can take their digital ID with them from one context to another (for example, from one country to another).
- can use their digital ID over time, even as their personal circumstances change (for example, as they move between jobs or homes).
- can control who has access to their digital ID and what information is shared.
- has a unique digital ID that is not linked to any other individual.
A bad digital identity, on the other hand, would be one that is not portable, persistent, private or personal. This might be the case if, for example, a person’s digital ID was linked to their physical address (which could change over time) or if it could be easily guessed by someone else (such as a birthdate).
The internet has no built-in user verification system. Instead, there is a variety of authentication solutions and logins, individually managed by different applications. The term “digital twin” refers to accurately recreating a person’s appearance and voice in the metaverse. Jensen Haung, the CEO of NVIDIA, gave a keynote speech using a cartoonish digital twin. According to him, in the upcoming years, both fidelity and the capacity for AI engines will increase to control your twin so that you can be in several places at once. Digital twins, indeed, are on the way. This is why we need to be ready for “evil twins” as well: exact digital copies that imitate you (or other people you know and trust) in appearance, voice, and behavior. Because it is an easy merger of recent technologies used for deep-fakes, voice emulation, digital-twinning, and AI-driven avatars, this type of identity theft will occur in the metaverse.
As digital life continues to expand into new realms, it’s more important than ever to create and maintain a strong digital identity. And with the rise of the metaverse—a shared, virtual space where people can interact and connect with each other—your digital identity will be more important than ever before. For the metaverse to fulfill its great promise without compromising the safety and control of its users, it needs to be created with digital identity in mind.