Hi, welcome to episode 10 of Lost in Immersion, your weekly 45-minute stream about innovation as VR and AR veterans. We will discuss the latest news of the immersive industry. So let's go. And today Seb is on something very, very precious. He's on holiday, so he will come back tomorrow, next week. So it's just the two of us, and you can start, please. Cool, thanks. So today I want to speak about this research. And so it's a research about what is called the social commerce. And of course, it speaks about homogeneity as well. So I want to preface this by saying that it's a study sponsored by Snapchat. So we have skin in the game, of course, in that. And also, it's not like a scientific study. They are asking about opinions. So what is your opinion about something? Are you more likely to do something or something? So I will put some margin, I would say, on the results. But still, I think there are interesting things to learn. And the first thing is, what is the social shopping journey? So it's something that grows and grows every day. So instead of just discovering a product and trying to search for it on Google, and then go to the brand, and then the purchase. So the traditional shopping journey is quite long. And the social shopping journey starts from a recommendation or something, a post or an influencer or something. So you have directly a link to the product. You don't have to search for it. It's just, you see the product. And because it's a recommendation from someone you follow or you trust, the to have a purchase is much bigger. And if you add that AR on top of this, so what they show in that study is that people are very, people think of AR as a benefit. So it brings the excitement of the indoor in-store shopping to the online, especially if it's like a social experience. They will be less likely to go in the store if they have virtual experience before purchasing the product. They feel more confident if they have an AR product, an AR try-on. And they think that it's less likely that they will have a return after purchase if there is an AR try-on. And most people, so 64% are very likely or somewhat likely to use AR during a purchase. And in addition to that, so the interest of AR, so you see it's quite high for a lot of things, a lot of things, clothing, furniture, tech, travel, beauty and food. So I think it's very interesting to look at this. And there is not a lot of study made on AR and the advantages with like real number. So I think it's good to have some kind of study like that, that shows that at least it's not a real purchase number, but it shows that people are likely to use it. So yeah, this is what I found very interesting in that study. Okay, so first of all, as you mentioned, this is a study ordered by Snapchat and we all know, because we discussed it last week, that they are willing to integrate their AR products to the retail world. So I guess this should be taken very cautiously. It looked like more than an infotainment than a real research paper, but well, I guess they are not that wrong about the willing of people to have another methods of buying stuff. I'm very curious, I don't know if you read the whole paper, but how could they know that AR is better as of today, there are no solutions on the market? Did they just show showcases videos of what AR could be on the retail side? And people are judging that and saying, yeah, well, so it could be great. Or did they send them app for them to try? I'm very, yeah, not suspicious, but yeah, I don't know if people already tried the AR application to arrive to those conclusions. What do you think? Did you read something about this in the paper? No, I don't know if they have such a scientific research method. Actually, it's not a research paper. Yeah, I know, but when you are doing any kind of measurement or percentages of usage or well, people are willing to do something, the same remark goes to, oh yeah, maybe social media, the number of people they ask the question is like 6,000. 6,000? So it's 8,000 and on this 8,000, 6,000 roughly are social media users. Okay. Okay. So yeah, it's a vast majority of people using social networks. So I guess, especially Snapchat. So we can conclude that it should be a very young audience because Snapchat is more oriented towards, it's what like 40 and less. I don't know any plus 40 using Snapchat a lot. So we can conclude that this is especially for youngsters and yeah, it matches the will of young users to integrate VR, AR and new technologies. However, they are not those who have the biggest income or power to buy stuff. And this is why it has been one issue of using AR and VR in the retail is that people that are using it doesn't have the power to buy afterwards. So it reduces the interest of these technologies for big companies because people that are using it is just using it as an entertainment and not just like for, like you showed the golden road to buy some more stuff and easier and faster. Yeah. And to add on the suspicion about the results, well, it's very easy to twist numbers. So for example, here, if we look at USA, UK and Germany, I think it is, it's roughly around half, but Saudi Arabia is always pushing the results up. So it's very convenient for the results of the, like for the big number. So you see here, Saudi Arabia is very big, but Germany, US and UK are around the middle. Do you know why? Is this because they have a special partnership with Saudi Arabia? I don't know. That's a very good question. I don't know if the behavior of users in Saudi Arabia is different, if the demographics are different, maybe the income, like the base income is different. I didn't find an answer for that in the paper. That's mysterious. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Something that I found interesting is when we think AR, actually, I think we could extend it to a virtual experience or immersive experience because, okay, AR is working very well for clothing or furniture or beauty. But for travel, I was thinking more about, I'm really curious what kind of experience there are out there. Is it a 360 video that you look around? Is it a virtual experience? I don't know. Well, right now for travel, it's that the actual applications that are available are for you to choose your seat on your plane, to visit your hotel room before booking it. And there are some, indeed, some 360 videos and stuff when you are on the beach to see what you will see by booking your holidays. But as you said, I don't see the AR application because all those that I mentioned, they are a VR application and I don't see the travel or holidays or tourism application of AR. Maybe when you are on your vacations and you need to find the closest restaurant or find some more information, it could be usable. And the same is for food. I don't know what can AR bring to the table, despite the fact that you can have information on where the restaurant is and what the price is on what is the menu. I don't think that the use case of being able to see your plate, potential plate in AR in front of you, is something that people want or that are interesting because we know that mostly when you are showcasing food, it's really not what you're getting at the end. I'm targeting the fast food companies and other food companies that are always showcasing very good looking food and this is actually not what you're getting. I don't know if you have some more use cases about food, but those are the two not so obvious and especially the 80% and 76% are very, very strange. I don't know what the people they ask about that. So yeah, it's very small so I will read it and I think it gives some clues about the result. It says, assuming it was available, how interested would you be to use an AR feature when shopping online for food, travel, beauty? Okay, so it answers my first question that they actually never tried an AR application. They're just bringing the subject and people are saying, yeah, why not? But okay. We understand better those high percentages and I think, as you mentioned, the Snapchat team or the team that published this document are very enthusiastic about those numbers because they want to sell AR for the retail world. So just maybe not so objective reasons for their client to adopt the AR and I guess people are not that blind and they are seeing what they are doing there. So of course, people are interested. I would be surprised that people are saying, no, we don't want AR. It's dumb stuff and it could have been very upsetting for us if people were thinking like that right now, especially with the Apple AR that is coming up. I guess it would be very bad news for them. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, I think most people will not dig into the document and I think this is the case for many, many news. I saw a lot of posts about this paper on LinkedIn just sharing just sharing the number without any digging into. And well, I mean, it's good for us. We are in this business and they are sharing good numbers, but are there really accurate number that represents what people really will do, not want to do, but really will do? I think that's another question. Yeah. I guess we can put that at the same place that the McKinsey and other consulting companies that are always telling us that in 10 years, AR and VR will represent like a hundred billion dollars in potential and for us that have been on the market for quite some years in the AR and VR field, we know that those numbers are not so that we are seeing because 10 years back from now, they were already saying that VR will be on every table and it will replace TV and it will represent billions and billions of dollars. And we can see that from different waves of innovation, like the, over the same 2015 big waves of AR where everything should have been booming. And we can see that right now we have barely two or three headsets available and they are still on the professional side. So we should be very cautious with these, even if you said that it's always a good publicity for us, but there are lots of companies and investments done based on those predictions. And a lot of companies are closing their doors just afterwards because the market is not as big as they were telling their investors. So be very cautious with that. And once again, people are just looking at the first pages and copy pasting it. Yeah. We know the stuff. Oh, and just also very quickly to add again on this, I don't have the, there is a graph somewhere on the internet and I need to find it. It says like when you ask someone, are you very likely to something, something that very likely is really different between people. Like maybe for me, it's between 90 and a hundred percent. And maybe for you it's between 75 and a hundred percent. So again, another way to twist numbers. Yeah. The three first are, yeah, maybe, yeah, there are no negative answer to that because you are neither likely or unlikely, somewhat. I mean, yeah, no. Okay. Unlikely, somewhat unlikely. Okay. Yeah. But it's, it's never, yeah. Very, very unlikely. Yeah. The likely one is, is tricky because yeah, as you said, the, it really depends on the person. So it adds some probabilistic bias. I'm just thinking of something just to, just give me 10 seconds. It was here. Okay. So just to, to, to, to respond to what I just said about the, you know, the weight of the marketing in terms of US dollars. And we know now that since 2017, so sale of VR application, for example, is just, it represents $3 billion US. So compared to what the prediction were giving us, it's way, way, way lower than, than the hundred or 300. I can't remember the name, the very number, which it was so high, it didn't make sense. And it doesn't make sense right now either. But you can have some surprises like, we know now that BeatSaber, for example, they earn $255 million US dollars since their, their launch. So it's really, really high for such a simple application as BeatSaber. But we, we can see that when people are liking or adopting a use case, you can make, you can earn big by, by not doing so, so, so, so much complicated development. So it just, I guess, I don't know if I can remember correctly, but BeatSaber, it started like, like a joke or we were doing a guitar you were like with Star Wars and it was just a, a very simple game for, for the launch of the Oculus. If I can remember, if I can remember correctly, there are just like, not so, so far from the, the launch of the DK1. So the, the community was very small at that time and it kind of become a very successful title and it still is because now they have, they can have the newest songs. But yeah, you do simple and sometimes it works. Yeah, I think I would be very curious. I don't have the number to see the revenue that is made by casual games on mobile phone. Like very, very simple design, very simple gameplay, but. Well, if you have, if you have the microtransaction architecture, usually it works very, very good. If, if the game is addictive, you, you won't, well, we, there won't be so much advertisement on YouTube and other platform for those 3D games on mobile phone that are free. And then you have some stuff to, to buy if you didn't make a lot of money, because they are just, they are, they have their advertisement everywhere. So I guess they are, they are making a lot of money, even if their game is not revolutionizing anything, because they are just, they are always clones of bigger titles. And we know that for, for example, Gameloft is a company that is specialized in those mobile games that are not always that innovative, but they are working because they are cheaper or free and then you can buy stuff. But it's really matching the new, the new way of people that are spending money on internet and, and in the metaverses right now, as well, we will already discuss that, I guess, is that you are, you have a service or something that you are consuming, but for free and you are paying if you think this is something that you like. This is a Patreon or a Teepee or all those platforms that are now collecting money for the creators, but creators themselves are not selling anything. They are just proposing content and people are giving money if they think this is valuable. And we can see that in the younger generation, it's very, very powerful, a very, very powerful way of consuming. And I think that we may see some changes in the following, following years. And especially if metaverses are becoming a reality or the younger generation is getting more power on the market because they have this habit of consuming free stuff and very, yeah, they empower a new way of consuming. And I guess this is not a bad thing because it brings the quality of the content back up front. Because if you are doing something that it's not interesting or people don't, don't think it's valuable, they won't be buying anything. So you won't have any money and you'll be the, all the, I don't know if I can say that, but the garbage services will just disappear naturally. They won't have any way of staying on the market. And all those maybe more valuable, maybe simpler idea that would have had more difficulties to be famous are now becoming very, very fast big players. So I think this is quite refreshing on some parts. I don't know if you agree with this. Yeah, I agree. I think I saw that Instagram is also now having a subscriber option now. I don't know if it's new or if it's had been there for a while, but I saw that last week. So yeah, I'm very curious to see how platforms like VRChat or Horizons have, would have this kind of like services, like their own Patreon kind of stuff where people could have, could propose their content in there. Well, this is, I guess this is where the banking system inside Metaverses is coming into place because people will want to do their transaction inside the Metaverse and not getting outside, going to the Patreon side and then making place their, place their contribution. This is the natural way, like Second Life did. They want to do transaction inside the VR world and this is where the banking system is becoming something that is needed. Okay. I think it's a good transition to your topic, right? Yeah, at some point. So no share screen for me. So the thing I would like to discuss with you is that there have been quite some noises or news about the way that, about the thing that Meta is, was willing at the time, was willing to open their Metaverse Horizon to the 13 children and plus, as it was reserved to the adults until now. And there were a lot of family association and children protection association that were saying that it won't be a good thing because children need to be protected on internet and especially in the Metaverses. And they didn't listen and now Meta Horizon is open to 13 plus. So my question is, did they do the right thing? Do you think that they are as desperate as that to bring public to their Metaverse Horizon platform and they are not listening to anything, they just want to have more users and prove that they were right to create this and invest as much as they did? So this is the first question and we'll follow up with other words. What do you think, Fabien? That's a very good question. I, so yeah, there are a lot of, because the Metaverse, the virtual worlds are immersive, the impact of like a bad intent action from someone is even, could be even worse than just, and I want to dismiss the impact of like a message interaction, but the impact could be even more critical or dangerous. So yeah, I'm not a specialist on that topic and at what age should it be. So one thing that I wonder is, I think I've seen that somewhere is children develop a sense of reality as they grow and if they are immersed too early in like a second reality, it could create some kind of mismatch into their development. So I don't know if it's before 30 or if it could also happen after 30. But yeah, I also wonder if it's just a commercial move from Meta. Because one thing that I didn't mention on purpose, do you remember that Meta, when they opened their Horizon platform, they had a lot of problem about moderation because they didn't think that people were that angry and not so social when they are in the Metaverse and they had to create like a special forces of moderation to be able to reduce yet speech and not so good behavior of the users. So I think that when you have this kind of experience and not thinking about this kind of stuff when you're creating a Metaverse and now they are opening that to children, maybe it's, yeah, maybe the associations were right about that. And the other point I would like to bring to the table is that VRChat, they have this kind of restriction, well, non-restriction as you can subscribe and join the VRChat community when you are 13 plus. And for quite some years now, the most ancient posts I could found were three years back from now, so 2020. And people were asking VRChat to higher the age restriction to 16 because on one side, the 13 plus community were, I won't say manageable, but yeah, they were jumping everywhere and it was bringing another kind of experience for the older users. So this is the first part and then, of course, there's a risk and danger of having 13 plus users in the middle of grown men and women and hearing stuff there, they shouldn't and maybe have some, because, you know, VRChat, you can join a discussion group without any restriction and sometimes you can hear and see and live a situation that 13 plus shouldn't live. So, but right now, the restriction is still 13 plus. So, I don't know if they are waiting for something more dramatic to happen to change that or does this, let's say this 13, 16 bracket of ages is so powerful or it brings so many people in the platform that they can't possibly restrict the age or otherwise it would, I don't know, cut in half their community. I really don't know. But once again, I'm finding that those companies are taking this subject very, very lightly because as we know, any kind of platform has their problem and we know that this is very, very present in our lives and we should protect the children more. Well, this is my point of view. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree and I wonder what kind, what form could that take? Is it like, I think there is a YouTube for kids, so should there be like a VR chat for kids and horizon for kids where the age restriction is only for that purpose? But then you have to verify identities. You don't want to have people- Yeah, we are coming back to this issue of do you want to give your ID and do you have the, do you want your digital ID done? And yeah, this is always the same topic about this, about the identity and age restriction and so on. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And who should enforce this? Should it be like a government restriction that says all metaverses should have an age restriction of this and this or should each company have its own? I mean, there are private companies, so maybe they can do what they want. So yeah, that's a very, very complex topic, yeah. Yeah. Just a last minute, because we are, we just reached the 45 minutes. But yeah, just to make a rebound or catch the ball on that is that I found out an article thing that the G7 would like to add some restriction or rules to the use of AI. So I know this is something that you will like. But yeah, we can see that government are really interested in the AI and chat GPT and so on subject right now. So we can guess that there will be some law or use restriction in the following days or weeks, because as we saw in the early days, it's getting a bit out of hands. And I guess they want to to limit this use. And also, this is one of the big, just one of the big AI creators at Google, I don't know if you know, the godfather of AI that left Google just to be able to speak. And this is one more big thinker or big architect of the AI that is rising his hand to to tell us that there can be some danger right there. So it's, the more people are talking about that, and the more we are, we are kind of afraid, you were a precursor on this met. Yeah, I don't know what you think about this. Just quickly before we end this discussion for today. Yeah, I think it's very interesting. And very, yeah, I, when, when Microsoft and Open AI released the chat GPT and Bing, Bing chat, there was a big move into Google. I think maybe they were thinking it's the first time they were really in danger. And then they rushed to, to develop things. Well, they brought back the Lambda AI that they closed because it was getting conscience and they are now using it back because they are in quite in a hurry. So it's a bit like meta, meta is in the red flag also because they are losing a community. And we can see that they are just like not answering their principles anymore. Like for the age restriction and Google for their conscience, conscious AI, they are like, it's like they are in danger mode and they are just breaking all the rules they were putting themselves. And yeah, just, just to go on, sorry for the interruption. Oh, no worries. And yeah, about meta, I think one of the big voice in the moment in favor of AI is Yann LeCun, which is the VP at meta in charge of AI. And yeah, some of his old colleagues are warning about dangers of AI, but he's still one of the leading voice on the positive side of AI. So yeah, interesting. We'll see what happens in the following days. Maybe next week we'll discuss that. Well, I think this is all for today. So we're good with that. So we'll see a setback from the holidays next week and good day, good afternoon and good evening to all and see you next
