Microsoft's Avatar Kinect: How Close Will Encounters Get?

Chat rooms are getting a little more real.

With the new "Avatar Kinect," Microsoft says it will be able to use its camera to scan in a user's body and then put it in a virtual room with other people's avatars that will be able to talk, gesture and even raise their eyebrows, just like the real people controlling them.

But forget about really close encounters of the virtual kind.

Microsoft stresses that player avatars will be confined to their chairs and that the lower body -- all of it -- will remain immobile.

"Avatar Kinect captures facial expressions, voice and upper body movement only," a Microsoft representative told AOL News.

But that doesn't mean that the new product, unveiled Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is entirely safe. The upper body is capable of lewdness as well, and even though avatars will not be able to interact, it doesn't always take two to tango -- so to speak. Microsoft states that users will be able to flag inappropriate or malicious content for moderators, but the tech giant may face a problem similar to Chatroulette's genitalia when it goes live.

The carnal implications of Microsoft's motion tracking camera surfaced shortly after the technology was released. In December, adult game developer ThriXXX claimed to be making an interactive title for the Kinect that let players fondle virtual breasts, garnering a lot of media coverage in the process.

But Microsoft blocked the title. It has repeatedly stated that the company and its camera are family friendly, telling IGN.com: "Xbox is a family-friendly games and entertainment console and does not allow Adults Only (AO) content to be certified for use on its platform, and would not condone this type of game for Kinect."

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ThriXXX, however, is still hoping to use the Kinect for a Windows title in 2011. Enterprising hackers opened the Kinect up for a broad community of amateur programmers just a few days after its release, and they've been slowly making more and more sophisticated hacks for a range of purposes ever since.

Not surprisingly, the notion of sex-themed games didn't take long to start developing in the hacker community. An early program by Dan Wilcox allowed the Kinect to track his chest in order give him a virtual bra, and more recently, YouTube user Rich Whitehouse used similar technology to give a popular "Soul Calibur" character's bust an almost other-worldy jiggle.

For now, it seems like Microsoft will be doing its best to keep Avatar Kinect clean, but it remains unclear how effectively the company will be able to stem the tide of lechery that could come along with its powerful new piece of hardware.