Meta tech can track your eye movements as you roam the metaverse

Meta has a patented technology to track people's eye movements and facial expressions while they roam the metaverse and body poses as well as create “virtual stores” that sell ad-sponsored digital goods in an effort to monetize the metaverse, dozens of recently filed patents suggest. The company was recently granted dozens of patents involving metaverse technology. It said that one of those patents detailed how sensors inside a headset would track a user's facial expressions to "adapt media content" for them.

The metaverse refers to a future vision of the internet which people primarily access through immersive technologies including virtual and augmented reality, which require special headsets. Meta is a metaverse evangelist, rebranding from Facebook last October to reflect its mission of becoming a metaverse company. In an interview, Meta global affairs chief Nick Clegg said that metaverse eye-tracking data could help advertisers "understand whether people engage with an advertisement or not. While this wording is vague, one potential application could be that a user's virtual avatar would mimic their real-life facial expressions.

Meta uses biometric data in order to create a more realistic digital avatar using virtual reality or augmented reality. Meta also plans to collect data on users so that it could tailor specific ad content while they immerse themselves in the metaverse, the patent filings suggest. One patent filing shows a sketch of a “wearable magnetic sensor system” that the user places around their torso for “body pose tracking. Another patent can detect a user’s facial expressions through a headset. The system would then compute the expressions and “adapt media content” based on its findings. The company is essentially following the same business model that translated into tens of billions of dollars in profit through its social network. Meta also filed a patent for a headset that is equipped with cameras and sensors that ensure the user sees brighter graphics depending on where they’re looking.

The eye is designed to “mate” with an animatronic robot head in an effort to make the eye “appear authentic to an observer,” according to Insider, which first reported the patent filing. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said his company plans to invest $10 billion per year over the next decade to develop metaverse technology. The tech titans including Apple and Microsoft have also indicated they plan to spend considerable sums of money to grab a share of the market.