We are currently promoting a project to develop (physical or virtual) avatar technology and to create a society where everyone can engage in various activities as they wish, beyond physical constraints, by using avatars. We are particularly concerned with enriching our communications, interactions, and relationships through avatars. However, this aim cannot be achieved by technology alone. We have to consider the ELSI (ethical, legal and social issues) concerning avatars as well. In this workshop, the speakers will introduce some of our technologies and then raise ethical and legal questions concerning avatars. Then we would like to discuss these issues with all the participants. 

The author has long been engaged in research and development on robots that act as human surrogates. Moreover, the author has been addressing the issues of how to give robots a sense of presence, how to make them look and feel alive, how to enrich human-robot interaction, and how to design a society where humans and robots coexist. Recently, based on this research and development, the author is leading a project to realize the Avatar Symbiotic Society in which one can easily manipulate multiple avatars as one wishes and participate in various social activities through them. In this presentation, the author will introduce some of the technologies being developed in this research and introduce the concept of an avatar symbiotic society. 

One of the key issues for the realization of an avatar symbiotic society is how to make human-avatar interactions or avatar-avatar interactions smooth and comfortable. For this purpose, we are conducting research on moral computing that detects and suppresses the immoral behaviors of the avatar operator or the person who interacts with the avatar. While there are technical challenges as to moral computing, there are ethical concerns as well. For example, such interventions concerning one’s moral behavior may result in diminishing one s autonomy. In this presentation, we will introduce the past research related to moral computing and discuss the future technical and ethical issues. 

In anticipation of the advent of an avatar symbiotic society, the author is working on a study for an Avatar Law. It is assumed that avatars will perform social activities in place of their operators. Therefore, the author categorizes the situations of avatar use and discusses the legal status of avatars accordingly. For example, it should be distinguished whether the avatar is tangible or intangible, whether the individual who operates it can be immediately known or not, whether the operator can be identified in some way or not, and whether the avatar is controlled remotely or it is autonomous. The author also discusses the technologies and legal systems required for the use of avatars, such as identity authentication. 

Human beings sometimes make sexual comments and engage in sexual activities. We will consider if different legal issues would occur and if so, how we could solve them when avatars engage in these activities. In particular, in the virtual reality (VR) world, many things, including appearance, are more flexible than in the real world. Therefore, we will be facing the question of how to protect the freedom of expression and the freedom not to see what one does not want to see. As such, these issues need to be examined in relation to avatars and sexual expression. So, we should focus on the issues of limitation of such expressions which have been discussed in the real world, such as rating and zoning. This will need to be considered when the VR space and cybernetic avatars (CAs) are used as a social infrastructure.