AFNOR mobilizes the metavers industry in search of benchmarks
On February 22, 2023, Jean-Nöel Barrot, French Minister for the Digital Transition and Telecommunications, and Franck Lebeugle, AFNOR’s Director of Standardization, launched a standardization commission aimed at getting an embryonic industry with a strong demand for interoperability up and running.
” We’ve lost industrial battles because we didn’t clear the way in upstream standardization. ” Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister Delegate for the Digital Transition and Telecommunications, was clear this Wednesday, February 22, 2023 on the premises of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, at the launch of the AFNOR standardization commission on metavers: tomorrow’s voluntary standards are written today, otherwise others will write them for you. And make their mark on the markets.
Issue number one: interoperability
Sometimes referred to as the successor to the Internet, and also described as a 3D social network, the metaverse is set to profoundly alter social interactions, identities in the digital field, commercial interactions, consumer habits, and even the relationship between users and public spaces. It also raises ethical and legal issues. The number of fund-raising events is increasing, and the players are becoming more structured: headphone manufacturers, sound spatialization specialists, software publishers, etc.
So it’s high time to bring all these people together and invite them to set the standards for the profession, defending metavers as an open, safe and inclusive system, in line with European values. ” French players cannot let others define international standards for them. This is what the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, called for when he presented the new European standardization strategy in February 2022.comments Franck LEBEUGLE, Director of standardization activities at AFNOR.
The question of sovereignty is a real one, as the metaverse is already sparking initiatives outside Europe, notably in China (where $50 billion has been pledged for immersive technologies by 2026) and South Korea. In Europe, a first pre-normative initiative has been set up under the aegis of the Metavers Standards Forum, which brings together some thirty players. Today, AFNOR is taking over for France, with the help of CEN-Cenelec, which has launched a needs survey on a European scale, and IEC, the organization specific to electro-technologies, on an international scale. ” The number-one issue is interoperability. Metaverse is not and will not be a product unique “, proclaims Béatrice Oeuvrard, Public Affairs Manager for Meta France. “It is inconceivable that a metaverse platform would prevent access to users who don’t have the right equipment,” warned the Minister. “ I’m quickly going to have to find a solution to the question of how to make the same asset, the same avatar, travel from one metaverse to another, with the same guarantees of authenticity for the transactions that take place there and for the characters that evolve there,” adds Philippe Rodriguez of the Metacircle think tank.
Reassuring “metaversceptics
Voluntary standards are there precisely to offer this common language. In contrast to regulations, which constrain (for example, with the EU-wide DSA), standardization federates and reassures, on a voluntary and consensus basis. ” In companies, IT security managers block access to professional metavers. The day a standard is perfected to guarantee trust, this lock will be broken. Standards expected to reassure ‘metaversceptics “Jacques Baranger, in charge of metavers at Talan Consulting, sees three families of metavers usage:
- The metaverse of customer relations, marketing and sales oriented
- Employee metavers for human resources and recruitment
- The metaverse of production, focused on design and innovation
Added to all these expectations are, of course, expectations of safety to guard against discriminatory, illicit or dangerous situations for children that could arise in a metaverse. This is why Philippe Coen, from the Respectzone collective, is taking part in standardization work and calling for an ” avatar charter “. This, at a time when one of the most eagerly awaited applications of the metaverse is training and education, as Sébastien Massart, Director of Strategy at Dassault Systèmes, points out. ” We’ll also need standards to know how to structure a training path ,” he says, giving healthcare as another example of an area eager for confidence: ” If I’m a doctor and I want to treat a patient by studying the virtual twin of the diseased organ in a metaverse, I want to be sure that I’m dealing with the right person, that the data is reliable, that the virtual model I’m using is scientifically valid. Standardization will provide this confidence “explains Sébastien Massart.
In other words, future users of metavers are also welcome at the standardization table. A first meeting of the commission is scheduled for March 27, 2023, and a roadmap for mid-September.
