Does Mixed Reality Have a Cassandra Complex?

Recently, great steps have been taken in making virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (we refer to three realities as XR) technologies accessible to a broad and diverse end user audience. The sheer breadth of use cases for such technologies has grown, as it has been embedded into affordable, widely accessible, and on-the-go devices (e.g., iPhone) in combination with some popular intellectual property (e.g., Pokémon Go). However, with this increase has come recognition of several ethical issues attached to the widespread application of XR technologies in everyday lives. The XR domain raises similar concerns as the development and adoption of AI technologies, with the addition that it provides immersive experiences that blur the line of what is real and what is not, with consequences on human behavior and psychology (Javornik, 2016; Ramirez, 2019). It is easy to write off concerns with XR technology as unfounded or premature. However, the current state of the art in XR is capable of several use cases which we see as cause for concern: 1) XR can generate realistic holograms, thanks to advances in computer vision, of people. These hologram representations are lifelike and can be made to say or do things thanks to advances in deep fake technology where video footage of a person is generated in real time based on large data repositories of real captured footage (Westerlund, 2019). This can be used to promote disinformation. For example, a deepfake hologram portraying a movie celebrity sharing political propaganda which the celebrity themselves don’t endorse, targeting fans and spreading lies about the incumbent leader’s political opponents. The hologram could be made to harass or provoke viewers (Aliman and Kester, 2020), goading them into acting irrationally. This warrants ethical considerations when designing XR experiences for broadcasting and entertainment; 2) XR technology which can sense and interpret objects in the environment can be used to mask and/or delete recognized objects. This can be used to promote misleading and/or noncompetitive behavior in consumer goods marketing industries. For example, while a user is browsing an XR marketplace a soft drink manufacturer may identify a competitor’s can and make it look dented and/or undesirable, nudging the consumer to purchase their ‘superior’ looking product instead. In an XR environment, consumers have a more direct interaction with a product than in traditional broadcast based marketing, with XR providing powerful virtual affordances (Alcañiz et al., 2019) which can persuade consumers and their purchase intentions. When technology which can track our every move, and has knowledge of our preferences and desires, is given the power to make decisions on our behalf becomes widespread it may have unintended consequences (Neuhofer et al., 2020). Therefore, the use of XR in marketing should be subject to ethical considerations; 3) XR experiences may be so immersive that they distract from the user’s surroundings, opening them up to harm. For example, there have been several reports of Pokémon Go users being hit by passing vehicles as Edited by: Evangelos Niforatos, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands