XR Glossary

Umbrella term for immersive and spatial technologies, including virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and related interactive systems. XR environments can blend digital content, physical environments, embodied interaction, and networked social experiences.

Ethical relevanceXR can affect privacy, identity, embodiment, accessibility, safety, cognition, and social behavior.

Related: Ethical Responsibility, Privacy & Policy, Security & Safety, Physiological and Psychological Effects of XR

Immersive digital environments typically experienced through headsets, spatial audio, hand controllers, body tracking, or other interactive systems. VR may be used for entertainment, training, education, therapy, collaboration, social interaction, and simulation.

Ethical relevanceVR can create powerful feelings of presence, raising questions about consent, psychological safety, harassment, simulation realism, accessibility, and data collection.

Related: Physiological and Psychological Effects of XR, Security & Safety, Ethical Responsibility

Overlays digital content onto a user's view of the physical world. AR can be experienced through phones, tablets, glasses, headsets, and other spatial devices.

Ethical relevanceAR can affect public space, attention, surveillance, bystander privacy, advertising, safety, and the relationship between digital information and physical environments.

Related: Privacy & Policy, Ethical Responsibility, Security & Safety

Experiences where digital and physical elements interact in more integrated ways. MR systems may understand surfaces, objects, spatial context, hand gestures, room layouts, and real-time user behavior.

Ethical relevanceMR systems may require detailed environmental mapping and behavioral data, raising questions about privacy, security, consent, and data ownership.

Related: Privacy & Policy, Security & Safety, Current Peer-Reviewed Immersive Technologies

Computing systems that understand and interact with physical or virtual space, including XR, computer vision, sensors, mapping, gesture recognition, spatial audio, embodied interfaces, and AI-enhanced environments.

Ethical relevanceSpatial computing expands computing into the body, home, workplace, classroom, and public life — creating new responsibilities for designers, developers, platforms, and institutions.

Related: Ethical Responsibility, Privacy & Policy, Security & Safety

Persistent or semi-persistent digital environments where people can gather, create, socialize, learn, work, play, and build culture through avatars and shared spaces. Accessed via VR, desktop, mobile, or web platforms.

Ethical relevanceVirtual worlds raise questions about governance, moderation, identity, community safety, digital property, accessibility, cultural preservation, and user rights.

Related: Ethical Responsibility, Security & Safety, Privacy & Policy

The obligation of creators, developers, researchers, platforms, organizations, and communities to consider the social, psychological, cultural, and human consequences of immersive technologies.

Ethical relevanceXR systems should be designed with care for user dignity, safety, consent, privacy, equity, accessibility, and long-term societal impact.

Related: Ethical Responsibility

Developing new technologies while actively considering risks, benefits, affected communities, unintended consequences, and public accountability.

Ethical relevanceResponsible innovation helps prevent harm before products reach scale.

Related: Ethical Responsibility, AI Ethics, Privacy & Policy

The rules, processes, policies, standards, and institutional structures that guide how technologies are developed, deployed, moderated, and regulated.

Ethical relevanceGovernance determines who has power, who is protected, how disputes are resolved, and how accountability is enforced.

Related: Ethical Responsibility, Privacy & Policy, Security & Safety

Users understand and voluntarily agree to how they participate in an experience, how their data is collected, and how their likeness, behavior, voice, biometric signals, or creative work may be used.

Ethical relevanceImmersive systems often collect sensitive behavioral and biometric data, making clear and meaningful consent especially important.

Related: Privacy & Policy, Ethical Responsibility, Security & Safety

Systems, platforms, and organizations clearly communicate how technologies work, what data is collected, how decisions are made, and what risks users may face.

Ethical relevanceTransparency supports trust, accountability, informed consent, and responsible participation.

Related: AI Ethics, Ethical Responsibility, Privacy & Policy

Individuals, organizations, platforms, and systems can be held responsible for decisions, harms, errors, abuses, or failures.

Ethical relevanceAccountability is essential when immersive technologies affect safety, privacy, identity, access, labor, education, health, and public life.

Related: Ethical Responsibility, AI Ethics, Security & Safety

Designing systems, communities, and experiences that respect and support people across differences in ability, culture, age, language, gender, economic access, geography, and lived experience.

Ethical relevanceInclusive design helps prevent immersive technologies from reinforcing exclusion, bias, discrimination, or unequal access.

Related: Ethical Responsibility, AI Ethics, Privacy & Policy

Design of technologies, experiences, content, and interfaces so that people with disabilities and different needs can participate meaningfully.

Ethical relevanceXR accessibility includes visual, auditory, mobility, cognitive, sensory, and economic considerations.

Related: Ethical Responsibility, Physiological and Psychological Effects of XR

Computational systems that perform tasks commonly associated with human intelligence, such as perception, language processing, prediction, classification, generation, planning, and decision support.

Ethical relevanceAI systems can influence access, identity, labor, creativity, social interaction, moderation, personalization, surveillance, and decision-making.

Related: AI Ethics, Ethical Responsibility, Privacy & Policy

When an AI or computational system produces unfair, discriminatory, or systematically distorted outcomes because of flawed data, design, assumptions, training methods, or deployment contexts.

Ethical relevanceBias can affect representation, access, safety, hiring, policing, education, healthcare, content moderation, avatars, and user experience.

Related: AI Ethics, Ethical Responsibility

The policies, standards, practices, and oversight structures that guide the responsible development and deployment of AI systems.

Ethical relevanceAI governance helps address risks related to bias, transparency, accountability, safety, privacy, labor, and human rights.

Related: AI Ethics, Privacy & Policy, Ethical Responsibility

Systems that produce new content — text, images, audio, video, code, 3D assets, characters, environments, and interactive media.

Ethical relevanceGenerative AI raises questions about authorship, consent, copyright, synthetic media, labor displacement, misinformation, bias, cultural appropriation, and creative integrity.

Related: AI Ethics, Ethical Responsibility, Privacy & Policy

Images, videos, audio, avatars, voices, environments, or other content generated or manipulated by AI or computational tools.

Ethical relevanceSynthetic media can enable creativity and accessibility, but can also enable impersonation, misinformation, non-consensual imagery, fraud, harassment, and identity abuse.

Related: AI Ethics, Security & Safety, Privacy & Policy

Making AI systems understandable to users, developers, regulators, and affected communities — including data sources, model behavior, limitations, risks, and decision processes.

Ethical relevanceTransparency helps users understand when they are interacting with AI and how AI may affect them.

Related: AI Ethics, Ethical Responsibility

The ability of individuals and communities to control access to information about themselves — personal, behavioral, biometric, location, social, and contextual data.

Ethical relevanceXR can collect unusually intimate data, including movement, gaze, gestures, voice, environment scans, and social interactions.

Related: Privacy & Policy, Security & Safety, Ethical Responsibility

Information about how people act, move, choose, speak, react, interact, and navigate within digital or physical environments.

Ethical relevanceIn XR, behavioral data can reveal preferences, emotions, attention, habits, identity, disability, stress, relationships, and vulnerabilities.

Related: Privacy & Policy, Security & Safety, Mind Control and Privacy at Work

Data related to physical or behavioral characteristics that can identify or profile a person — face, voice, iris, gait, hand movement, body motion, heart rate, and other biological or behavioral signals.

Ethical relevanceXR devices may collect biometric signals continuously, creating privacy and security risks if data is misused, leaked, inferred from, or shared without consent.

Related: Privacy & Policy, Security & Safety, Neurotechnology

How individuals are represented, recognized, authenticated, or socially understood in digital environments — usernames, avatars, profiles, credentials, reputations, virtual bodies, and platform histories.

Ethical relevanceDigital identity affects autonomy, safety, reputation, self-expression, ownership, impersonation, and community trust.

Related: Ethical Responsibility, Privacy & Policy, Security & Safety

The relationship between a user and their virtual body, character, or representation in immersive spaces.

Ethical relevanceAvatars can support expression, embodiment, and belonging, but can also raise issues involving impersonation, harassment, stereotyping, realism, identity misuse, and emotional attachment.

Related: Ethical Responsibility, Mind Control and Privacy at Work, Privacy & Policy

The principle that systems should only collect the data necessary for a clear and legitimate purpose.

Ethical relevanceBecause XR can collect highly sensitive information, minimizing data collection helps reduce privacy, security, and surveillance risks.

Related: Privacy & Policy, Security & Safety

The monitoring, recording, tracking, or analysis of people, behavior, environments, or social interactions.

Ethical relevanceXR surveillance may involve users, bystanders, workplaces, classrooms, public spaces, or private homes.

Related: Privacy & Policy, Mind Control and Privacy at Work, Security & Safety

Building protections into products, systems, communities, and experiences from the beginning rather than adding them after harms occur.

Ethical relevanceXR safety may include moderation tools, reporting systems, personal boundaries, age protections, comfort settings, accessibility support, and abuse prevention.

Related: Security & Safety, Ethical Responsibility

Protection of systems, devices, data, identities, networks, and users from unauthorized access, abuse, manipulation, theft, or harm.

Ethical relevanceXR security is especially important because immersive systems may involve identity, biometrics, payments, social interaction, workplace data, and environmental mapping.

Related: Security & Safety, Privacy & Policy

Unwanted, hostile, threatening, discriminatory, sexual, or abusive behavior in immersive environments.

Ethical relevanceBecause XR can create embodied presence, harassment can feel more physically and psychologically intense than harassment in traditional media.

Related: Security & Safety, Ethical Responsibility, Physiological and Psychological Effects of XR

The practices, tools, policies, and human or automated systems used to manage behavior, content, conflict, safety, and community standards.

Ethical relevanceModeration affects speech, safety, fairness, inclusion, governance, appeal rights, and community trust.

Related: Security & Safety, Ethical Responsibility, AI Ethics

Creating digital services that protect and support children and young people according to their developmental needs, rights, safety, and privacy.

Ethical relevanceXR experiences for children require special care around data collection, advertising, social interaction, safety, embodiment, and psychological effects.

Related: Security & Safety, Privacy & Policy, Ethical Responsibility

Identifying possible harms, evaluating their likelihood and severity, and designing safeguards to reduce them.

Ethical relevanceXR risk assessments should consider physical safety, privacy, psychological effects, identity, harassment, accessibility, manipulation, and vulnerable users.

Related: Security & Safety, Ethical Responsibility, Privacy & Policy

Technologies that monitor, measure, stimulate, interpret, or interact with the nervous system or brain-related signals.

Ethical relevanceNeurotechnology can create benefits in accessibility, health, communication, and research, but also raises deep concerns about mental privacy, agency, consent, and misuse.

Related: Neurotechnology, Brain Tech, and Ethical Challenges

A system that enables communication between the brain or nervous system and a computer or device.

Ethical relevanceBCIs may affect privacy, autonomy, identity, health, accessibility, labor, and human agency.

Related: Neurotechnology, Brain Tech, and Ethical Challenges, Mind Control and Privacy at Work

Information collected from the brain or nervous system, including signals that may reveal cognitive, emotional, sensory, or behavioral states.

Ethical relevanceNeural data can be highly sensitive because it may relate to mental states, health, emotion, attention, intention, or identity.

Related: Neurotechnology, Brain Tech, and Ethical Challenges, Privacy & Policy

The right to mental self-determination, including freedom of thought, mental privacy, and protection from unwanted manipulation or coercive influence.

Ethical relevanceXR, AI, neurotechnology, and persuasive systems may affect attention, belief, behavior, autonomy, and decision-making.

Related: Mind Control and Privacy at Work, Neurotechnology, Ethical Responsibility

Protection from unauthorized access, inference, manipulation, or exposure of a person's thoughts, emotions, intentions, or cognitive states.

Ethical relevanceAs immersive and neural technologies become more sophisticated, mental privacy becomes central to human dignity and autonomy.

Related: Mind Control and Privacy at Work, Neurotechnology, Privacy & Policy

Design strategies that influence user behavior, choices, attention, habits, or beliefs.

Ethical relevancePersuasive design can support beneficial outcomes, but it can also become manipulative when users are not aware of how they are being influenced.

Related: Mind Control and Privacy at Work, AI Ethics, Ethical Responsibility

Subtle design choices that steer users toward certain actions or decisions.

Ethical relevanceIn immersive environments, nudging can be powerful because it may combine embodiment, spatial cues, AI personalization, social pressure, and sensory design.

Related: Mind Control and Privacy at Work, AI Ethics, Ethical Responsibility

The feeling of "being there" inside a virtual, augmented, or mixed reality experience.

Ethical relevancePresence can deepen learning and empathy, but it can also intensify fear, harassment, manipulation, trauma, discomfort, and emotional impact.

Related: Physiological and Psychological Effects of XR, Ethical Responsibility

The feeling that a virtual body, avatar, or digital representation is connected to one's sense of self or physical experience.

Ethical relevanceEmbodiment can affect identity, empathy, confidence, bias, body image, emotional response, and social interaction.

Related: Physiological and Psychological Effects of XR, Ethical Responsibility

Nausea, dizziness, disorientation, eye strain, headaches, or discomfort that may occur during or after immersive experiences.

Ethical relevanceXR creators should design experiences that reduce discomfort, support user control, and provide clear safety guidance.

Related: Physiological and Psychological Effects of XR, Security & Safety

A form of motion-related discomfort that can occur in virtual environments, often caused by mismatch between visual motion and the body's physical sense of movement.

Ethical relevanceReducing cybersickness is part of responsible, accessible, and safe XR design.

Related: Physiological and Psychological Effects of XR, Security & Safety

Distress, anxiety, fear, humiliation, trauma, or other negative psychological impacts caused or intensified by an experience.

Ethical relevanceXR can make emotional experiences feel more immediate and embodied, requiring careful attention to content warnings, consent, moderation, and user controls.

Related: Physiological and Psychological Effects of XR, Security & Safety, Ethical Responsibility

Scholarship that has been evaluated by experts before publication.

Ethical relevancePeer-reviewed work can help ground XR ethics in evidence, rather than speculation, marketing claims, or hype.

Related: Current Peer-Reviewed Immersive Technologies

Formal rules, guidelines, regulations, standards, or organizational practices that shape how technologies are developed, used, governed, and evaluated.

Ethical relevancePolicy can protect users, define responsibilities, guide institutions, and create accountability across the XR ecosystem.

Related: Privacy & Policy, Ethical Responsibility, Security & Safety

Agreed-upon technical, ethical, safety, accessibility, or governance practices that help systems work responsibly and consistently.

Ethical relevanceStandards can improve interoperability, safety, accessibility, privacy, and public trust.

Related: Ethical Responsibility, Security & Safety, Privacy & Policy

Ethical safeguards for people participating in research, testing, or studies.

Ethical relevanceXR research can involve sensitive data, emotional response, embodiment, social interaction, biometric signals, and psychological effects — requiring careful protections.

Related: Current Peer-Reviewed Immersive Technologies, Security & Safety, Privacy & Policy