The Sandbox Co-Founder Addresses AI's Impact on the Metaverse

Everybody is talking about A I these days basically in every industry including crypto and the sandbox recently co published an avatar report about how A I could alter the metaverse. So joining us now to break this down is Sebastian Bourget, co founder and coo of the sandbox. Welcome back to the show, Sebastian. OK. Hey, a pleasure to be back. Um All right. So let's just start with the top line story here because I actually don't personally know about this. What does A I or generative A I mean for the metaverse specifically? What, how is it, how is it going to change things in the metaverse? Well, I think like generative A I and A I in general is going to impact in a very meaningful way. Uh The matter, first of all, like by accelerating and empowering even more the creators, like what used to take uh days before from like idea and conception can now take just a matter of second imagine as a creator, you don't need any specific skills. You can just type a pro of text and well, a R generative A I solution like scenario will actually uh bring to like those ID in the form of like spatial environment or like characters like avatars. And that helps you then to, to generate that populates those experiences that you create for the metaverse much faster. That's a great way. So A I as like a much like more diverse and creative approach to it. So then they make, it will make the metaverse actually more inclusive by bringing more original content and creation that come up from the algorithm A I also helps like matters to actually be safer for everyone. How basically there's a solution in place. We partnered with the GGWP good game well played. It's a company that reduced toxicity between like usual conversation in game, meaning like now, like we can have like uh text for multiple languages that are like through A I and then remove like any like bad word, et cetera. And also um and quite interestingly like A I is a technology that enables like avatars to have more emotion, more light inside the meta itself. Imagine that just from a video feed from your camera or your phone, like you, you move you dance and like all that movement is captured directly from your video stream on the phone, straight on to your avatar. That means like avatar will move, will express themselves in much more realistic ways. That means like like we can have a social interaction that are even more like deeply connected and the better expression of emotion and this is just an example of all the possibilities, teeth like A I can help to create better, like uh narrative storyline to develop uh more intelligence from like the behavior of N PC. So even when they are not real human at certain point of time in experiences N PC can still interact with you and drive you through, interact. And more we are really interested uh the potential of A I and how we like, creators can leverage it to make me more um living more full of life, more fun to play and, and more creative and inclusive overall sebastian, we can't really talk about A I and the benefits of A I without of course, talking about some of the risks and some of the threats and some of the dangers. I mean, it's nice to hear your positive view on A I because there is a lot of alarmism in the United States about A I. But I think it's, we just so, so what are, what are some of the risks here there? I imagine there's risks as well to benefits of A I and the metaverse? Well, like, like any technology I believe, like it's how it's being used that is going to impact. I mean, like the, the the the used cases, et cetera. So so far like we're seeing it more from like a very positive angle how A I can like drive positive impact from the negative side. I I believe that uh A I uh uh unfortunately, also the potential to take some of the worst aspects of like uh the content that we we've seen or uh potentially like let users into um like, like we've seen that, for example, chatbot that start to discuss between each other and like start to turn into more of a negative narrative before and so on. So that might be a possibility. But overall, like the more we read every day, there's a lot of like news on a high, we we see that those A I agents can like draft can like create their own mission, create their own objective. And um so far like within the last 6 to 12 months, the acceleration of the technology uh here by opening the models that A I is being built upon has had a much more like versatile and positive impact in content and creation that we ever seen before. You know, uh Sebastian. Uh One of the things that we have to talk about is the race, the global race to catch up with the meta wars and be first uh similar to kind of the race for CBD C. Right now, the French Economy Ministry wants to stop dominance by international internet giants in the meta wars. According to a consultation published earlier this week, uh what do you make of those kind of concerns being raised about the risk of big gatekeepers uh like the US blocking out competition from smaller players in the space. Well, uh like you said, like, like the matters is uh one of the most important um aspect to consider for the future generation. The new generation of digital creator, uh true digital ownership is a fundamental right that I believe like uh governments around the world should protect and enforce. We're seeing region of the world like Japan or Hong Kong more recently. Um Korea you were just discussing before to have an Asia in general to have a much more uh like open approach to our like embracing and supporting the web free sector, its innovation and all the ecosystem behind of entrepreneur, businesses and users, Europe have also sent some signals to our like supporting like web free in general. Typically France is trying to put in place some framework that keep um putting France ahead in terms of like um the the different uh like sectors that using NFTS and cryptocurrencies and the region as well with Dubai, Saudi Arabia are stepped forward. So in a way that maybe us and I'm less familiar is, is a bit later on the topic and as creates uncertainty for like the entrepreneur uh and the people who want to use that technology and might then be late uh on, on the on the global scene because of that. Yeah, you, you know, you mentioned the Mina region. I want to ask you a question about that and integrate that with what's happening at sandbox. Sandbox's stroke and sand is up 23% month on month. Uh You know, Sandbox has attracted a lot of celebrity partnerships from Snoop Dogg to skateboard or Tony Hawk, which who by the way is amazing. And uh you also recently announced an mou partnership with the Saudi Arabia Digital Government Authority. Uh You know, talking about Mina, can you give us the details about that particular partnership? What that means, what that looks like? Yeah, exactly like one of the strengths of sandbox is like it's really becoming a global digital nation and where any user and avatar are like uh citizen of. We have presence in uh many countries, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Dubai and more recently, Saudi Arabia, where we signed this partnership with the Digital Government Authority to acquire a space with virtual land in the sandbox and developed it as a way to experiment and learn about like the metaphors and its potential for all the like all the public institution and ministries that they planned on it. So it's a great step forward when such like a government or a country decide to embrace that uh technology and more elite that shows that then for the private sector, the business and entrepreneur, uh there is a set of cap a set of direction and that put more confidence for them to both this ecosystem locally, to develop opening new job opportunities for, for them as well. All right, Well, uh I still can't get over having to go through or actually visually see uh Interpol's office in the meta. So this is obviously quite different. Uh And, and interesting. Uh Thanks so much uh for that. Uh that was Sebastian Boger, a co-founder and CEO of the San Box. And guess what we will be seeing him. Sebastian will be at consensus in Austin, Texas in just two weeks. Uh You can see him there and if you want to be there, well, just head to consensus dot kindest dot com for all the information that is out there.