The rise of generative AI such as ChatGPT and the Metaverse that Zuckerberg was obsessed with stalled

News on May 9th, Metaverse technology that promised to immerse users in the virtual world was once all the rage. However, with the rise of generative artificial intelligence technologies such as ChatGPT, the Metaverse business has been abandoned by the business community three years later.

In 2021, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg renamed the trillion-dollar company Meta. After much hype, Metaverse technology became an object of obsession in the tech world and quickly won over investors. However, the lack of a coherent product vision ultimately led to the Metaverse's downfall. When the tech industry turns to the more promising new trend of generative artificial intelligence, the Metaverse is doomed.

Grand Promise

Zuckerberg once claimed that the Metaverse will be the future of the Internet. When Zuckerberg announced the company's name change, he used a cool video to promote a metaverse future where people can interact seamlessly in the virtual world: users can "make eye contact" and "feel like they are together with each other." He claimed that the Metaverse can bring people an "immersive" experience.

These grand promises have given the Metaverse high expectations. Everyone began to hype this vast vision of the Internet, but the actual technology failed to realize this promise in its short life cycle. When interviewed using virtual reality technology, the host and a low-quality cartoon image of Zuckerberg made awkward gestures at each other, which was in sharp contrast to the futuristic vision shown in Meta's pitch video.

The Metaverse has also suffered a serious identity crisis. A functional business needs clear use cases, target audience, and customer willingness to adopt the product to thrive. Zuckerberg described the Metaverse as "a vision that spans many companies" and "the successor to the mobile internet," but did not describe the fundamental business problems that the Metaverse could solve. The concept of the Metaverse has been around for a long time, but Zuckerberg's actual product is just the virtual world Horizon Worlds, which also requires users to use extremely bulky Oculus headsets. It seems to have nothing to do with the product roadmap or real vision of the Metaverse. When Zuckerberg claims that a billion people will use the Metaverse, and all will spend a few hundred dollars, it doesn't explain what people will get in return for their cash, or why anyone would want to wear a bulky device to participate in a low-quality game. Cartoon concert.

Ambitious

In the months following Meta’s rebrand, it seemed like every company was launching a Metaverse product, even if they didn’t really know what it was or why.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at the 2021 Ignite conference what a technology the Metaverse is for his company, the industry and the world. Breakthrough,” he couldn’t say enough. Roblox, an online gaming platform founded in 2004, went public amid this wave of hype, with a valuation of $41 billion. The cryptocurrency industry has successfully convinced people that digital properties in virtual worlds will be the next frontier in real estate investing. Even companies such as Wal-Mart and Disney that seem to have nothing to do with technology have joined in.

Companies are rushing to enter the Metaverse space, causing investors, consultants and analysts to increase their forecasts for the growth of the Metaverse business. Market consulting firm Gartner claims that by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least an hour a day in the Metaverse. According to the Wall Street Journal, the virtual world will forever change the way we work. Global consulting firm McKinsey predicts that the Metaverse could generate up to "$5 trillion in value," adding that approximately 95% of business leaders expect the Metaverse to "positively impact their industry" within five to 10 years. Not to be outdone, Citigroup released a long report claiming that the Metaverse will bring business opportunities of US$13 trillion.

Downfall

Despite all the hype, the Metaverse is not on a healthy path. After all, every business idea or rosy market prediction is built on Zuckerberg’s ambiguity. On top of commitment. When people actually get a chance to try it, no one really uses the Metaverse.

Decentraland, a cryptocurrency-based Metaverse product, claims to have an “ecosystem worth US$1.3 billion”, but there are only about 38 daily active users. Decentraland denies this, saying it has 8,000 daily active users; but that number is a tiny fraction compared to many large online games. By October 2022, Meta's Horizon Worlds platform will have less than 200,000 monthly active users, far below the 500,000 target set by Meta for the end of 2022. According to reports, only about 9% of these users create game worlds that attract 50 players. Reports claim that Horizon Worlds is so full of loopholes that even Meta employees are reluctant to use it.

As economic growth slows and the craze about generative artificial intelligence hits, the Metaverse business is in serious trouble. Microsoft shut down its virtual office platform AltSpaceVR in January 2023, laid off 100 members of the "Industrial Metaverse Team" and made a series of layoffs on the HoloLens team. Disney and Walmart closed their Metaverse departments and cooperation projects one after another in March this year.

Zuckerberg and Meta also stopped supporting the Metaverse. Zuckerberg announced in March that Meta’s “biggest investment will be to advance artificial intelligence and integrate it into every product we make.” Meta chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth (Andrew Bosworth) this year He said in April that he, Zuckerberg and the company's chief product officer, Chris Cox, now spend most of their time on artificial intelligence. Although Meta has burned more than 10 billion US dollars in research and development to achieve "Metaverse First", it has even stopped promoting the Metaverse to advertisers.

LESSONS LEARNED

While the idea of ​​virtual worlds or online experiences may live on in some form, the Metaverse is undoubtedly dead. This should be considered one of the most historic failures in the history of technology.

Zuckerberg may not have much interest in the Metaverse, because he never seems to have a clear definition, just slightly tweaking Facebook's name and bulky hardware products. It's just a means for the company to boost its stock price, not a true vision of how humans will interact in the future. Zuckerberg used his vast wealth and influence to get the entire tech industry and much of the American business community to support this half-baked idea.

This should also cause serious reflection in the venture capital community, which desperately followed Zuckerberg and invested billions of dollars in the hype.

Zuckerberg misled everyone, burned tens of billions of dollars, convinced an entire industry to follow his unrealistic obsession, and then killed another idea just when it started to attract investor interest. strangled. With Zuckerberg at the helm, Meta has no future.

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