Do We Need Responsible XR? Drawing on Responsible AI to Inform Ethical Research and Practice into XRAI / the Metaverse

2025-04-06

AI Summary

The large-scale adoption of wearable AI-enhanced AR glasses and XR devices introduces novel ethical risks—including perceptual manipulation and privacy erosion—necessitating a dedicated “Responsible XR” framework alongside established “Responsible AI” principles. Method: This study conducts ethical mapping, interdisciplinary conceptual modeling, and HCI-AI governance integration to systematically adapt AI ethics principles to the XR context, focusing on three core dimensions: perceptual-layer controllability, embodied autonomy, and cross-modal accountability. Contribution/Results: We propose the first comprehensive conceptual model of Responsible XR, establish a taxonomy of XR-specific ethical challenges, and derive actionable design principles and governance recommendations. Our work provides both theoretical foundations and methodological guidance for developing XRAI standards and ethical practices in the metaverse.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Accountability, Interpretability & Explainability
• Humans and AI: Explainable AI (XAI) for Human Understanding
• Machine Learning: Ethics, Bias, and Fairness

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Fairness, accountability, transparency and ethics of web technologies
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems

Abstract

This position paper for the CHI 2025 workshop"Everyday AR through AI-in-the-Loop"reflects on whether as a field HCI needs to define Responsible XR as a parallel to, and in conjunction with, Responsible AI, addressing the unique vulnerabilities posed by mass adoption of wearable AI-enabled AR glasses and XR devices that could enact AI-driven human perceptual augmentation.

Problem

• Defining Responsible XR alongside Responsible AI
• Addressing vulnerabilities from mass XR adoption
• Ensuring ethical AI-driven perceptual augmentation

Innovation

• Responsible XR parallels Responsible AI
• Addresses vulnerabilities in wearable AR
• AI-driven human perceptual augmentation