Who am I going to meet in virtual worlds?

Avatars play a significant role in creating a sense of presence and identity for users in virtual worlds. You can customise the appearance, personality and preferences of your digital representations from a cat to an alien to a near-copy of you. Avatars allow you to express yourself in ways that may not be possible in the physical world, and they can help to create a sense of community and social connection in the virtual world. There is not a maximum number of avatars per human, so you can have several identities tied to different avatars, and so can other users.

One difference with the real world is that in virtual worlds, not all the avatars or characters you will encounter will be played or controlled by a human. There will be also avatars controlled by artificial intelligence know as AI agents or non-playable characters (NPCs) and virtual beings. 

Just like in the real world, you will come across avatars that are strangers, because you don´t know them. There are also familiar avatars. You know the person behind them in real life or you have interacted with them before. However, you may not know who they really are in real life.

Avatars could be hacked (this means that another human could take control of them) or be impersonated (somebody could create a very similar character and make you think it is the original one). Nowadays, fake avatars and deep fakes impersonating other people, especially famous ones such as actors/actresses, musicians or politicians, can be difficult to detect. As AI technology improves, it will be even more challenging to determine if they really are truly who they claim to be. However, you can use the different tips given for fighting disinformation to recognise some of them.  

Currently, there is not a system in place for certifying avatars in virtual worlds. Some platforms may decide to certify their avatars, in a similar way to what you see on social media platforms today.

Virtual worlds providers are likely to ask you to prove your real identity to register in their platform (for example in a work environment virtual world), to reinforce age-limits or for payments and purchases in their virtual world, but your real identity may remain secret to other users.

In a virtual world, you may even come across holograms, which are technically not avatars. Rather, they are a digital three-dimensional (3D) representations of an object or a person, projected using light. They are often used in an augmented reality (AR) environment where reality is enhanced with virtual objects, but it is also possible to use holograms in a virtual environment.