⚖️The XR Guild® Principles

Version 3.0, adopted Feb 4 2025

WHEREAS we have seen multiple waves of technology [ Artificial Intelligence (AI), eXtended Reality (XR), the Metaverse and Spatial Computing ] all proclaiming to be the future of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI); and where well-researched ethical principles may help guide development of HCI for the benefit of consumers and makers alike, we, the domain experts, propose these core principles to help guide our field:

1. Every Person Matters

HCI should be designed to work for everyone. That means it should be:

• Accessible — providing equitable access to everyone, regardless of physical or cognitive abilities; or social or economic challenges

• Fair — unbiased, non-discriminatory, non-exploitive, and has equal opportunity

• Integrated — representation across ability, age, gender, identity, race, religion, nationality

• Special attention should be given to inclusivity for disabled and at-risk individuals (e.g., cognitively impaired or developing minds)

• Mutual respect enables safer participation for everyone — the quietest voices are often the most important to hear

• The Guild and its members will neither discriminate nor retaliate against anyone on the basis of any jurisdictionally protected category

• No person should ever be left behind, sacrificed, scapegoated, or undermined in the pursuit of our goals

2. HCI should prioritize the well-being of humans & communities

Reflecting the broader principles of human rights throughout their design and lifecycle. That means:

• Cognitive liberty is a human right to be free from external manipulation, and to decide for ourselves what to think and do

• Privacy is a necessary condition to protect our cognitive liberty

• Consumers should have ultimate control over their HCI interactions for their collective benefit

• All mainstream Hardware (HW) and Software (SW) should ultimately move towards being interoperable, open, and extensible for maximum consumer benefit

• Shared virtual spaces should be governed by community standards that are derived from the participants. Companies should support a diversity of such community standards.

• These standards should be made clear prior to someone joining a space; and before holding individuals accountable for their compliance

• Individuals have a right to present their identity as they decide. Notwithstanding, services may legitimately (if internally) verify a person’s full legal identity for purposes of accountability.

3. Design and Interaction patterns that trick, confuse or exploit should be exposed and redesigned for safety

That means:

• interaction where the AI has inordinately more power and humans have far fewer defenses, and is therefore unethical.

• Presuming end-user "consent" based on coercive contracts of adhesion does not respect individual rights or safety. Long and confusing “Terms of Service” (TOS) or “End User Licence Agreements” (EULAs) are neither informed nor give our true consent.

• We must avoid and dismantle harmful interaction patterns affecting social development, including grooming, exploitation, harassment, and psychological addiction enabled by our products

• We should fight misinformation with better informed facts and reasoning, and avoid supporting systems that promote misinformation.

4. People have the right to know and control how their personal information is collected and used.

e.g., surveillance, sousveillance, egocentric, biometric data. That means:

• Companies, services and applications have an obligation to minimize personal data collection and to protect any collected information, subject to informed consent, authentication, authorization, and accounting

• This includes the right to inspect or revoke access at any time

• All uses of personal data, including by third parties, should be clearly documented and explained for all participants

• Still, we believe that some uses of this personal information and metadata are too complex for consumers to give their truly informed consent

• Given personal data about our identity or appearance, no one has the right to augment or impersonate anyone else without their consent

• Advertising is a form of speech with many protections. Some of us will opt-in to targeted, experiential and immersive ads. Some won’t. We should each be given a clear choice in the matter.

5. We should support a thriving ecosystem of creatorship

including artists, writers, designers, musicians, programmers, etc… That means:

• We must ensure creators have appropriate rights to how their work is reproduced, modified, or monetized across XR, AI, and spatial computing platforms.

• We recognize that today, everything is essentially a remix and that sufficient transformation of any creative work allows for its free and fair use by others.

• We should ideally move towards an open, transparent and sustainable system where new ideas, creations, and expressions are recorded, such that creators and improvers are eligible for compensation and/or credit for any added value.

• However, we should balance creator rights with the goal of all creations eventually becoming part of the Creative Commons, of mutual benefit to all, and so constrain intermediate owners (“IP landlords”) who may only monetize other people’s IP without necessarily adding value.

• The Guild will not solicit or accept any privileged or proprietary information

• We commit to disclosing when AI or external resources are used in our work.

• IP arising from work or ideas within the Guild will be made openly available.

• The Guild will not facilitate exclusive agreements among companies. We will advocate for broadly pro-consumer policies.

6. We are responsible for our decisions, individually and collectively

That means:

• We have a duty to help mitigate serious problems wherever possible

• We must make conscientious decisions about what will be best for consumers, including anticipating potential ethical dilemmas and addressing them proactively

• We should seek out and make best use of their feedback and aspirations

• Over time, we strive to empower more socially and individually beneficial and eliminate all harmful aspects of our collective work through empathy, curiosity and diligence

• We have a duty to alert authorities, companies, and the public of serious health issues, violations of law, privacy or other human or civil rights

• When we see opportunities to address inequities—whether geographic, economic, or cultural—we commit to taking meaningful action to close those gaps and foster a more inclusive future.

• We are responsible for any agents (entities acting on our behalf) that we may create or invoke.

• We commit to future-proofing our technologies, practices, and principles by anticipating and addressing emerging ethical challenges in XR, AI, and spatial computing.

• We commit to designing technologies that are resilient, adaptable, sustainable, and aligned with evolving user needs and societal expectations.

7. We strive to share knowledge, foster dialogue and learning, and actively address serious challenges to create a more informed and responsible community

That means

• We realize that not all employers, companies or co-workers will follow our ethical principles. Our job is to educate and patiently encourage change.

• We seek to support our members who espouse ethical principles inside their companies even when they are few in number.

• We will avoid publicly shaming companies for their practices, unless the facts are well-established in legal, governmental and/or public domains

• We will never ask our members to strike, quit or take direct action that puts any members in jeopardy

• We favor speaking with a unified voice, which we understand may require more patience and perseverance than direct action

BE IT RESOLVED: All XR Guild® members adhere to the above principles both in their professional work and in their interactions with others, including and among XR Guild® members and our agents (any entity acting on our behalf). To the extent that these principles ever come into conflict with each other, we will choose the path of greatest good while also minimizing harm.

We hereby adopt the W3C code of conduct: https://www.w3.org/Consortium/cepc/ and, to the extent possible, adhere to the W3C evolving accessibility guidelines: https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

The XR Guild is a registered trademark of the XR Guild, Inc. A non-profit 501c3 membership organiation created to foster ethical development in XR/AR/Metaverse and Spatial Computing. All rights reserved.

These Principles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, free to use for commercial purposes with attribution (e.g., you might wish to say "adhering to" or "adapted from" XR Guild® principles, and ideally a link back to this page).