The metaverse seems to be on everybody's lips - and yet, very few people can actually explain what it means or why it is important. This book aims to fill the gap from an interdisciplinary perspective informed by law and media and communications studies. Going beyond the optimism emanating from technology companies and venture capitalists, the authors critically evaluate the antecedents and the building blocks of the metaverse, the design and regulatory challenges that need to be solved, and commercial opportunities that are yet to be fully realised. While the metaverse is poised to open new possibilities and perspectives, it will also be a dangerous place - one ripe with threats ranging from disinformation to intellectual property theft to sexual harassment. Hence, the book also offers a useful guide to the legal and political governance issues ahead while also contextualising them within the broader domain of governance and regulation of digital technologies.

This book examines the use and potential impact of deepfakes, a type of synthetic computer-generated media, primarily images and videos, capable of both creating artificial representations of non-existent individuals and showing actual individuals doing things they did not do. As such, deepfakes pose an obvious threat of manipulation and, unsurprisingly, have been the subject of a great deal of alarmism in both the news media and academic articles. Hence, this book sets out to critically evaluate potential threats by analyzing human susceptibility to manipulation and using that as a backdrop for a discussion of actual and likely uses of deepfakes. In contrast to the usual threat narrative, this book will put forward a multi-sided picture of deepfakes, exploring their potential and that of adjacent technologies for creative use in domains ranging from film and advertisement to painting. The challenges posed by deepfakes are further evaluated with regard to present or forthcoming legislation and other regulatory measures. Finally, deepfakes are placed within a broader cultural and philosophical context, focusing primarily on posthumanist thought. Therefore, this book is a must-read for researchers, students, and practitioners of political science and other disciplines, interested in a better understanding of deepfakes.