On Wednesday, Facebook (FB.O) founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rolled out new AI products for consumers, including bots that create photo-realistic images and smart glasses that answer questions. He also unveiled an updated virtual-reality headset that the company says will soon be available to customers for $499. Zuckerberg described the products as bringing together virtual and real worlds and underscored that part of what Meta offered was low-cost or free AI that could integrate into a daily routine.
The company also announced a productivity assistant for employees called Metamate and the first consumer-facing generative AI product, a chatbot that can generate text responses and photo-realistic images. It will be built into Meta’s latest smart glasses, which are set to start shipping on October 10. A software update planned for next year will enable the glasses to identify objects and locations in the real world and perform language translation.
Another new tool, a digital assistant named Meta AI, will be able to provide sophisticated answers to simple questions and even compose a text reply for those with poor handwriting or speech impairments. It will use a large language model to understand what a user is saying and can access information from Microsoft’s Bing search engine to help compile a response. The digital assistant will be integrated with Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger and incorporated into the next generation of the Meta glasses.
A third new tool is an app called Emu, which will allow users to replace the background in photos with a scene of their choice. The app will be initially launched in the US and built into the Quest headsets, which are set to begin shipping on October 17. In the virtual world, the company is launching a virtual reality platform called Horizon Worlds that will allow people to interact with hologram versions of themselves and friends.
Zuckerberg, who was speaking at the company’s Meta Connect engineering conference, said the technology was a glimpse of “what we call the metaverse.” The metaverse is a near-future where physical and virtual worlds will be intertwined and where people will interact with holograms of themselves or their friends, he added.
At the event, Meta also rolled out its latest version of the Quest headset. It can now stream video and audio and has been fitted with pancake lenses that will offer more clarity than those used in the previous headset. It is a significant upgrade, and the company’s executives referred to it as the best value in the industry, contrasting that with an impending release of a much more expensive headset from Apple (AAPL.O). The headset will be available for purchase starting on October 17 for $299. It will also be sold with a pair of Ray-Ban smart glasses, which incorporate the new Meta AI assistant and facilitate live streaming to Facebook and Instagram. It will also be a plug-in for smartphone augmented reality apps, including Snapchat’s (SNAP.O) Stories.
