[1/9]Guests attend a presentation of the latest virtual reality headsets at the MetaConnect event at our headquarters in Menlo Park, California, USA on September 27, 2023.Reuters/Carlos Barria Obtaining license rights
MENLO PARK, Calif., Sept. 27 (Reuters) – Metaplatforms (META.O) Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that bots that create photorealistic images and questions announced new AI products for consumers, such as smart glasses that answer questions. Updated virtual reality headset.
Zuckerberg explained that these products connect the virtual and real worlds, emphasizing that part of what Meta provides is low-cost or free AI that can be integrated into everyday work. Meta’s Quest was his early bestseller in the VR space, and company executives say it’s the best value in the industry, making it more expensive than his Apple (AAPL.O) headset. It is suggested that it will be released soon.
Speaking in the central courtyard of Meta’s vast Silicon Valley campus, Zuckerberg said Meta’s new generation of Ray-Ban (ESLX.PA) smart glasses will ship on October 17th and will cost $299. Ta.
The device includes a new Meta AI assistant that allows users to livestream what they’re watching directly to Facebook and Instagram, an improvement over the previous generation’s ability to take photos.
Zuckerberg spoke at the MetaConnect conference, the social media company’s biggest event of the year and its first in-person conference since the pandemic began.
He also said the latest Quest mixed reality headset will begin shipping on October 10th, introducing the company’s first consumer-generated AI product. The latter includes a chatbot called Meta AI that can generate both text responses and photorealistic images.
“Sometimes we innovate by releasing something that has never been seen before,” Zuckerberg said. “But sometimes we innovate by making something great but very expensive available to everyone at a price that’s affordable or even free.”
Meta AI will be integrated into smart glasses as an assistant starting with a beta rollout in the US. A software update planned for next year will allow the assistant to identify places and objects people are looking at, as well as perform language translations.
Meta created Meta AI using a custom model based on the powerful Llama 2 large language model, which the company released for general commercial use in July. Zuckerberg said the chatbot will have access to real-time information through a partnership with Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) search engine Bing.
In an interview with Reuters, Nick Clegg, president of Meta Global Affairs, said the company had taken steps to filter personal information from the data used to train its models, as well as banning the creation of realistic images. He said he has imposed limits on what the tool can produce. A public figure.
Clegg pointed to LinkedIn as an example of a website whose content is not being used intentionally, and said it has “sought to exclude data sets that are predominantly personal information.”
Custom AI bot
Meta also announced that it is building a platform that developers and everyday people alike can use to create their own custom AI bots. Custom AI bots have profiles on Instagram and Facebook, and ultimately appear as avatars in the Metaverse.
To demonstrate the tool’s capabilities, Meta created a set of 28 chatbots with different personalities styled after the voices of celebrities such as Charli D’Amelio, Snoop Dogg, and Tom Brady, according to a company blog post. is said to have been created.
These features appear to be aimed at improving existing apps and devices rather than developing new advertising surfaces or other revenue streams.
“I don’t think monetization of AI products will happen at Meta for a while, and ultimately it will be more indirect. They will be more interested in helping develop platforms for other developers to use.” “There seems to be some interest,” Bob O’Donnell said. , Chief Analyst at TECHnalogy Research.
Zuckerberg also said Wednesday that Xbox cloud gaming will be coming to Quest in December.
Meta first announced the Quest 3 headset in the summer, around the time Apple announced its $3,500 high-end Vision Pro headset.
Starting at $500, the Quest 3 boasts the same mixed reality technology that debuted in Meta’s more expensive Quest Pro device launched last year, showing the wearer a video feed of the real world around them.
Today’s announcement reflects how Zuckerberg plans to navigate this year as investor enthusiasm shifts from augmented reality and virtual reality technology to artificial intelligence.
The stakes for this event were so high last year that investors accused Facebook and Instagram’s parent company of spending too much money on Metaverse, so Zuckerberg will continue to fund his vision. This led to the layoff of tens of thousands of staff.
Developers were looking to Meta to see what kind of apps they could create for the latest hardware devices. Meanwhile, investors were looking for signs whether the gamble, which has cost the company more than $40 billion in losses since 2021, would pay off.
Reporting by Katie Paul and Anna Tong in Menlo Park, California Additional reporting by Yuvraj Malik, Pushkala Aripaka and Shashwat Awashti in Bangalore Editing by Kenneth Li, Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis
Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.