Menlo Park, California – Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, showcased an array of cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools and innovative digital devices at the company’s Connect conference for VR developers. The event revealed Meta’s commitment to advancing the metaverse and capitalizing on the burgeoning realm of virtual reality.
During the conference, Zuckerberg introduced the new Quest 3 virtual reality headset and the latest Ray-Ban smart glasses, both designed to enrich the metaverse experience. These developments underscore Meta’s ongoing investment in technologies that will shape the future of digital interaction.
One standout innovation highlighted by Zuckerberg is the integration of artificial intelligence into Facebook’s messaging apps, including WhatsApp and Messenger. Users will soon gain the ability to effortlessly create and share digital stickers through simple written prompts, akin to the popular ChatGPT technology.
For instance, by typing the phrase “pizza playing basketball,” users can generate whimsical digital stickers featuring a cartoonish pizza slice dribbling a basketball.
Additionally, Zuckerberg revealed upcoming AI-powered editing tools for Meta-owned Instagram, set to debut next month. These tools will enable users to transform their photos and images using written prompts, as demonstrated by Zuckerberg himself. Through various prompts, he showcased how a childhood photo could be modified to depict him wearing an outlandish sweater in one image and sporting blue hair in another. He even transformed a picture of his dog, Beast, into an origami-style figurine.
The foundation for these AI tools is the company’s Emu computer vision model, which Zuckerberg described as a sibling to Meta’s Llama family of language-generating software. Emu boasts the ability to generate images in a mere five seconds, a feat Zuckerberg acknowledges as “really cooking,” though his children still deem it not quite fast enough.
Meta’s ambition extends beyond static imagery, aiming to provide users with realistic visuals within its chat tools, similar to the Midjourney AI app within the Discord messaging service.
Further emphasizing Meta’s AI prowess, Zuckerberg unveiled the Meta AI digital assistant, comparable to ChatGPT. This digital assistant possesses the capability to access Microsoft’s Bing search engine, enhancing its real-time information retrieval capabilities for user queries.
To infuse a touch of star power into their metaverse vision, Meta has partnered with prominent celebrities like Paris Hilton, Mr. Beast, and Kendall Jenner to lend their digital personas. Users can interact with these digital characters, such as the travel-focused digital assistant Lorena, portrayed by celebrity Padma Lakshmi. Alternatively, they can engage in a game of Dungeons & Dragons with a narrator known as a dungeon master, played by none other than rapper Snoop Dogg.
Zuckerberg hinted at future possibilities, suggesting users will eventually be able to create their own digital assistants. However, Meta plans to pilot this feature with select businesses before a wider rollout.
While Meta remains committed to the metaverse, Zuckerberg’s discourse at the Connect conference highlighted a greater emphasis on artificial intelligence than in previous years. He emphasized that the company’s AI investments are integral to laying the groundwork for the metaverse, exemplified by the latest Ray-Ban smart glasses developed in partnership with EssilorLuxottica. Priced at $299 and available for purchase on October 17, these glasses come embedded with Meta’s AI software, enabling users to identify landmarks and translate signs while interacting with the physical world.
Zuckerberg concluded, “Before this last year of AI breakthroughs, I kind of thought that smart glasses were only really going to become ubiquitous once we really dialed in, you know, the holograms and the displays and all of that stuff, which we’re making progress on. Now, I think that the AI part of this is going to be just as important,” highlighting the compelling role of AI in making smart glasses an indispensable tool for the metaverse.
