If you’re "murdered" in the metaverse, should it be considered a distressing crime that needs punishment under the law? This was one of the topics being discussed by big business bosses and world leaders this week.

Speaking at a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland this week, the United Arab Emirates’s Minister for Artificial Intelligence was asked how governments might respond to the advent of the metaverse. Omar Sultan Al Olama said that the world governments need to discuss and agree on a bunch of policies and standards related to this brave new world.

One aspect of this, he argued, is the example of “terrorizing people in the metaverse.” Al Olama argues the realism of the metaverse could mean extreme actions like harassment or "murder" in augmented reality could have a significant psychological impact on a person in physical reality. There are no clear answers on how to deal with this, but he believes it’s a question that will need to be addressed in the near future. 

"If I send you a text on WhatsApp, it’s text right?” Al Olama said. “It might terrorize you but to a certain degree it will not create the memories that you will have PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] from it."

"But if I come into the metaverse and it’s a realistic world that we’re talking about in the future and I actually murder you, and you see it, it actually takes you to a certain extreme where you need to enforce aggressively across the world because everyone agrees that certain things are unacceptable," he added.

"There needs to be a conversation at the level of the United Nations, the ITU [the International Telecommunication Union], or non-governmental bodies where a certain standard is set."

"That standard is set on the [current] internet to a large extent where everyone agrees... For example, dark web content is illegal in many countries," he added.

Although still very much a work-in-progress, the metaverse is an immersive augmented reality environment in which people can adopt a digital avatar to interact with other individuals and the artificial world around them. This idea hasn't fully come to fruition yet, but tech companies such as Meta and Epic Games are pouring billions of dollars into developing the technology – although it's worth noting that platforms like VRChat have already existed for years, and online multiplayer games such as World of Warcraft have allowed people to virtually gather for longer still.

Chris Cox, Chief Product Officer at Meta, was also speaking on the same panel as Al Olama. He highlighted how the metaverse will likely be a diverse place with multiple different platforms all operating with their own rules, norms, and culture. While Cox agreed on the need for some internationally agreed standards, he suggested that different platforms will also need to have some responsibility to set standards for themselves.

"Just as if you walk in a bar versus a playground, there's a different expectation of what rules govern that place. Some of them are social norms, some of those are enforced by those who run those institutions," explained Cox.

“Much like the internet, in the metaverse, you're going to have service companies operating different systems with different rules. Some are going to be way more open-ended. Some are going to be Rated R. Some of them will be PG. Some are going to be more or less strict around safety and integrity,” Cox added.

“There will probably be something like a rating system, which we have for film, we have for music, we have for other types of content so that a parent or a young person can have some sense of what the rules are in the environment they’re going to walk into,” he continued.