MENLO PARK, California, Sep 27 (Reuters) – MetaPlatforms (META.O) Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday launched new artificial intelligence products for consumers, including robots that create photorealistic images and smart glasses that answer questions, as well as an updated virtual reality headset.
Zuckerberg described the products as a combination of virtual and real worlds, and stressed that part of what Meta offered was free or low-cost AI that could be integrated into daily routines. Meta’s Quest is the best-seller in the nascent virtual reality space and company executives described it as the best value in the industry, a nod to Apple’s imminent launch of a much more expensive headset. (AAPL.O).
Speaking from a central courtyard on Meta’s sprawling Silicon Valley campus, Zuckerberg said a new generation of Meta’s Ray-Bans (ESLX.PA) The smart glasses would begin shipping on October 17 at a price of $299.
The device will incorporate a new Meta AI assistant and will be able to livestream what a user is viewing directly to Facebook and Instagram, a step up from the previous generation’s ability to take photos.
Zuckerberg spoke at the Meta Connect conference, the social media company’s largest event of the year, as well as his first in-person conference since the start of the pandemic.
It also said the latest Quest mixed reality headset would begin shipping on October 10 and introduced the company’s first consumer-facing generative AI products. The latter includes a chatbot called Meta AI that can generate both text responses and photorealistic images.
“Sometimes we innovate by launching something that has never been seen before,” Zuckerberg said. “But sometimes we innovate by taking something that is amazing, but very expensive, and making it so that it is affordable for everyone or even free.”
Meta AI will be integrated into smart glasses as an assistant, starting with a beta launch in the United States. A software update planned for next year will give the assistant the ability to identify places and objects that people see, as well as perform language translations.
Meta created Meta AI using a custom model based on the powerful Llama 2 big language model that the company released for public commercial use in July. The chatbot will have access to real-time information through a partnership with Microsoft (MSFT.O) search engine Bing, Zuckerberg said.
In an interview with Reuters, Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said the company had taken steps to leak private details of the data used to train the model and also placed restrictions on what the tool could output, such as prohibition of the creation of realistic images. of public figures.
“We have tried to exclude data sets that have a large preponderance of personal information,” Clegg said, citing LinkedIn as an example of a website whose content was deliberately not used.
(1/9)A guest attends a presentation of the updated virtual reality headset during the Meta Connect event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., September 27, 2023. REUTERS/Carlos Barria Acquire license rights
CUSTOM AI BOTS
Meta also announced that it was building a platform that both developers and everyday people can use to create their own custom AI robots, which will have profiles on Instagram and Facebook and will eventually appear as avatars in the metaverse.
To demonstrate the tool’s capabilities, Meta created a set of 28 chatbots with different personalities voiced by celebrities such as Charli D’Amelio, Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady, according to a company blog post.
The features appeared to be intended to enhance existing apps and devices rather than develop new advertising surfaces or other revenue streams.
“I don’t see Meta monetizing AI products for quite some time and I think it will end up being more indirect. They seem much more interested in helping develop a platform that other developers will use,” said Bob O’Donnell. , chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research.
Zuckerberg also said Wednesday that Xbox cloud gaming will come to Quest in December.
Meta first announced the Quest 3 headphones during the summer, at the time Apple presented its Vision Pro headphonesa high-end product with a price of $3,500.
Starting at $500, the Quest 3 features the same mixed reality technology that debuted in Meta’s more expensive Quest Pro device released last year, showing users a video of the real world around them.
The day’s announcements reflect how Zuckerberg plans to navigate the shift this year in investor fervor toward artificial intelligence from virtual and augmented reality technologies.
The stakes were high for the event, as investors last year criticized the parent company of Facebook and Instagram for spending big on the metaverse, prompting Zuckerberg to lay off tens of thousands of employees to continue funding your vision.
Developers were watching to evaluate what applications they could create for Meta’s latest hardware devices. Meanwhile, investors looked for signs of whether a bet that has lost the company More than 40 billion dollars from 2021 can bear fruit.
Reporting by Katie Paul and Anna Tong in Menlo Park, California Additional reporting by Yuvraj Malik, Pushkala Aripaka and Shashwat Awashti in Bengaluru Editing by Kenneth Li, Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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