Social XR: Key technical, scientific, and ethical challenges
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Social XR: Key technical, scientific, and ethical challenges

Marta Bieńkiewicz
1,#,*
,
Julia Ayache
1,#,*
,
Julien Laroche
1
,
Panayiotis Charalambous
2
,
Cristina Becchio
3
,
Marco Coraggio
4
,
Bertram Taetz
5
,
Francesco De Lellis
6
,
Antonio Grotta
4
,
Anna Server
7
,
Daniel Rammer
8
,
Richard Kulpa
9
,
Franck Multon
10
,
Azucena Garcia-Palacios
11
,
Jessica Sutherland
12
,
Kathleen Bryson
12
,
Kathleen Richardson
12
,
Stéphane Donikian
10
,
Didier Stricker
5
,
Benoît G. Bardy
1
*Correspondence to: Marta Bieńkiewicz, EuroMov Digital Health in Motion, Univ. Montpellier IMT Mines Ales, Montpellier 34090, France. E-mail: marta.bienkiewicz@cooperativeai.org
Julia Ayache, EuroMov Digital Health in Motion, Univ. Montpellier IMT Mines Ales, Montpellier 34090, France. E-mail: julia.ayache@umontpellier.fr
Empath Comput. 2026;2:202623. 10.70401/ec.2026.0026
Received: June 09, 2026Accepted: October 29, 2026Published: October 30, 2026
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This manuscript is made available in its unedited form to allow early access to the reported findings. Further editing will be completed before final publication. As such, the content may include errors, and standard legal disclaimers are applicable.

Abstract

Recent breakthroughs in computing and machine learning models spurred advancements in the social eXtended Reality (XR), yet current systems remain limited in their ability to support authentic human embodiment and socio-motor interaction. We argue that value-driven progress in social XR is no longer solely constrained by isolated technical barriers, but by a lack of integration across three interdependent dimensions: technological development, scientific validity, and ethical responsibility. Drawing on the combined expertise of an interdisciplinary consortium, we identify a set of critical challenges which gatekeep the future of social XR. These include limitations in multimodal movement sensing and representation, unresolved questions about the measurement and interpretation of social interaction (e.g., synchrony, embodiment, and presence), introduction of AI-driven autonomous virtual characters and emerging ethical risks related to behavioural data, automation, and algorithmic mediation of social experience by digital tools. This article offers a structured perspective on the overcoming bottlenecks for the value-driven progress in the field. We unpack key tensions we encountered such as computational efficiency and sustainability, openness and data-sharing versus privacy, autonomy versus human agency. Our goal is to reframe social XR as an interdisciplinary problem requiring coordinated advances across engineering, movement science, and ethics.

Keywords

Social eXtended Reality (XR), multi-modal embodied interaction, autonomous virtual characters, virtual avatars, socio-motor cues, amplification of sensorimotor primitives, multi-agent interaction, responsible AI

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Bieńkiewicz M, Ayache J, Laroche J, Charalambous P, Becchio C, Coraggio M, et al. Social XR: Key technical, scientific, and ethical challenges. Empath Comput. 2026;2:202623. https://doi.org/10.70401/ec.2026.0026

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