This is ignoring the instinct built over generations that humans don't want to "experience a new world", they want to explore it with other humans.
We are social animals. Facebook is so successful because it started out as a way to connect more with people you already knew or were acquainted with.
The "metaverse" and all its AI-generated worlds add little to no value in that direction. Wake me up when the metaverse makes it trivial to host a garden party and cook for the 5-10 attendees.
I think humans want to explore it with intelligent beings, not necessarily “humans”. These new technologies have the potential to create agents in the movie “Her” sense that are compelling to interact with. The metaverse applicability seems clear.
You and your friends jump in the metaverse every Tuesday night to play some virtual game, e.g., go hunting or rob a bank. Timmothy is out on vacation this week so won't be joining -- but now you can spawn up virtual Timothy, which is trained on a bunch of Timothy's data (see the other HN post about the guy who trained his bot on his friends group chats). Now Timothy is with his friends in this virtual world and he behaves mostly how Timothy does.
Not just no, but hell no.
If I'm going to play with a robot, I absolutely don't want it to replicate a friend. Even more, I would be furious if any of my friends replicated me like that.
When I'm playing with my friends, I'm doing it to play with my friends, not simulacra of my friends.
And you will protest it. Just like my MIL hates Facebook and thinks calling is so much more efficient than texting. But the younger generation will find this as natural as TikTok.
But I find the idea of replacing actual friends with simulations to be inherently objectionable.
So, pretty much what you said, but probably having sex with anime girls instead.
I think the majority humans want to be with humans, not just intelligent beings. Some don't, of course, and there's probably a decent business catering to them.
It's clear there's a market for well-designed and compelling VR chat. VRChat[1] has a large community and had a very active developer community[2]. Facebook had no luck in attracting users in a proven market - there's no reason to believe their products would be more popular after hooking a generative agent up to it.
If you are looking for "the metaverse" in a generic sense - other people are already doing it better than Facebook (and have been for some time). It's been unlocked for years. Facebook hasn't even managed a capable clone, much less broken new ground.
[2] Until they banned all modding - here's a video of a user using sign language and subtitles: https://twitter.com/TheFoxipso/status/1551640725455982593
Facebook gets to take 30% of VR Chat's gross revenue (they sell premium features) on standalone and the desktop Oculus store.
Apple likely makes more profit off Roblox than Roblox.
There are currently so many weaknesses and limitations with the medium of VR that it’s just not particularly appealing for folks to spend a lot of time using it, and I think that’s why you don’t have great content gen.