The metaverse is posed to be the future of social interactions, technology, and e-commerce. According to data, there are over 400 million active monthly users on the metaverse.

The rise of the metaverse has equally followed the rapid growth and development of AI. These two tools, used together, are powering one of the most potent and interactive shopping experiences brands provide to date.

The metaverse and AI are making it easier for companies to merge their online and offline e-commerce through augmented reality, shopping communities, and personalized shopping experiences.

What is the Metaverse?

The metaverse is a term that has gained much attention recently, especially after Facebook announced its name change to Meta. The term refers to a shared virtual world where people can interact in a natural-feeling way regardless of their physical location.

The metaverse aims to offer virtual experiences as immersive and engaging as the real world.

How the Metaverse Relates to Commerce

Through the lens of commerce, the metaverse is essential in delivering unrivaled customer experiences that can improve sales, profits, and brand loyalty. There’re endless shopping experiences that a brand can deliver since there are fewer limitations than the physical world.

For instance, through virtual showrooms, users across the globe can interact with a virtual store and its products before making a purchase. They get adequate time to assess the products, try them, and interact with a virtual assistant to get answers to their questions about the product.

How the Metaverse is Leveraging AI

For a considerable time, AI and metaverse development have been disparate projects. Within commerce, AI is a powerful tool used to understand consumer behavior, suggest ads, and help users search for products they are looking for.

Within the metaverse, AI is being used to improve the virtual experience. This ranges from curating recommended experiences to generating metaverse avatars based on user input.

One of the most predominant uses of generative AI within the metaverse currently is in asset creation, iterative testing, and experience design in video games. a16z Games, a venture capital firm investing in game production companies and other tech ventures, points out how AI has made the game development process much faster, requiring only a few tweaks and embellishments.

Without AI, these processes can take months or years to complete.

For brands, using generative AI means they can build and deliver new metaverse shopping experiences to their customers much faster. Therefore, they can fully use the metaverse and all its commerce benefits.

Generative AI will not require you to learn code or manage a large team of developers working on your metaverse projects. Instead, you can express the virtual space and experience you want your shoppers to have and have it quickly generated, tested, and deployed.

Therefore, your business operates much more efficiently with improved productivity and more room for experimentation and innovation.

How AI and the Metaverse are Redefining Commerce

Brands have much to benefit from by conjunctively using AI and the metaverse. Here’re some ways your brands can benefit and deliver unrivaled customer experiences.

Digital Personas: AI can use facial recognition software and other technologies to create realistic and accurate avatars for your metaverse users. This allows them to carry their real identities into the metaverse, including mannerisms, facial expressions, and non-verbal cues.

Non-Player Characters and Digital Humans: AI makes it easier to develop and deploy non-player characters (NPCs) or digital humans who users can interact with in the metaverse like real people. This can be a virtual shopping assistant in your virtual showroom.

Multilingual Accessibility: Language is one of the biggest barriers to international commerce. AI allows you to develop virtual shopping experiences with excellent multilingual support to ensure users across the globe have an excellent experience.

The natural language processing (NLP) used by AI also allows the avatars to sound natural, which is crucial, especially for NPCs.

Issue Resolution: AI within the metaverse can help automatically solve user issues about their virtual experience or interactions with your products. Therefore, users enjoy shopping in your virtual space.

Education and Training: In conjunction with AI, the metaverse will be a valuable education and training tool for your new workforce. New hires can learn quickly and effectively in a life-like natural environment without the risk of real-life hazards in case of training mistakes.

Be Among the First in the Metaverse

The metaverse will change how businesses interact with their consumers. Therefore, you should not be left behind in the rush to establish commerce dominance within the new virtual worlds.

Efrat Tzory is the VP of Marketing at ByondXR, a retail technology company that developed a proprietary XR-enabled eCommerce platform to help brands and retailers take a step into the metaverse and create and manage virtual stores and showrooms. Efrat is a senior marketing and strategic advisor and a leading digital expert with extensive experience and a long record of proven achievements in senior management positions and strategic consulting. Efrat has over 20 years of experience in helping companies grow not only in awareness but in value, too. She has developed and executed B2B and B2C marketing strategies for top-tier consumer brands, and the largest energy companies in Israel, as well as startups and financial firms.