Privacy and Security Landscape of Metaverse

The Metaverse will create an immersive and interoperable virtual universes for user interaction. The advancement of AR/VR technology, brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) via sensor technologies and 5G/6G links, has important implications for the Metaverse as different application domains will be realized sooner than predicted. However, its immersiveness and interoperability creates significant privacy and security issues beyond Web 2.0 technology. This position paper advances the existing knowledge in the space of privacy and security implications of the proposed platforms with particular focus on the friction between the Metaverse and existing data protection laws such as EU GDPR. Furthermore, this elaborates on Artificial Intelligence (AI) usage in the Metaverse, potential technical solutions for identified privacy and security challenges and future research directions as recommendations. Presented at the 22nd UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence (UKCI 2023), September 6–8, 2023, Birmingham, UK