There’s an upcoming Virtual World Initiative (aka the Metaverse Initiative) at the European Commission on May 31st, and I had a chance to get Florence G’sell’s thoughts on it. She’s a law professor in France teaching at the University of Lorraine and leads the Digital, Governance and Sovereignty Chair at Sciences Po. If anything, she believes that this initiative might highlight some gaps in the many relatively new regulations that span from the AI Act, Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, and that it may reveal some needed amendments for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

We do a deep dive into some of the XR relevant provisions of the AI Act, and do a broad overview of the Fundamental Rights approach to technology policy development and that there may already be some foundational principles. She points out that the right to respect for mental integrity already currently exists within the EU’s Fundamental Charter of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to respect for his or her physical and mental integrity.” But that the XR and neuro technologies may highlight new threats to these rights. The EU uses these human rights to help address technologies that provide systemic risks to fundamental rights.

We also talk about a failed effort by the EU Parliament in 2017 to provide “electronic personhood” status for autonomous robots / AI