Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks to digital assistants, smart glasses and AI to help metaverse push

Meta
has
new
artificial
intelligence
tools
and
celebrity-endorsed
digital
assistants
that
CEO

Mark
Zuckerberg
hopes
will
help
to
jump-start
the
metaverse.

Zuckerberg
showed
off
the
AI
software
as
well
as
the
company’s
new

Quest
3
virtual
reality
headset
and
latest
Ray-Ban
smart
glasses
on
Wednesday
at
Meta’s
Connect
conference
for
VR
developers
at
its
headquarters
in
Menlo
Park,
California.

Users
of
Facebook’s
various
chatting
apps
like
WhatsApp
and
Messenger
will
soon
be
able
to
share
digital
stickers
that
can
be
automatically
created
via
written
prompts,
capitalizing
on
the
popularity
of
technology
like
ChatGPT.

For
example,
users
can
write
the
prompt
“pizza
playing
basketball”
to
generate
a
goofy
looking
digital
sticker
of
a
cartoonish
pizza
slice
holding
a
basketball.

Zuckerberg
also
introduced
new
AI-powered
editing
tools
that
are
coming
next
month
to
Meta-owned
Instagram
that
will
let
users
alter
their
photos
and
pictures
with
written
prompts.
He
showed
in
a
demonstration
how
various
prompts
could
modify
one
of
his
childhood
photos
to
picture
him
wearing
an
ugly
sweater
in
one
image
and
sporting
blue
hair
in
another.
He
also
converted
a
photo
of
his
dog
Beast
to
resemble
something
akin
to
an
origami
figurine.

The
company’s
Emu
computer
vision
model
is
powering
the
new
AI
tools.
He
characterized
the
technology
as
a
sibling
to
its

Llama
family
of
language-generating
software.
The
Emu
software
can
generate
images
in
around
five
seconds,
he
said.

“My
kids
tell
me
it’s
still
not
fast
enough,
but
five
seconds
gets
to
a
point
where
you’re
really
cooking,”
Zuckerberg
said.

Users
will
eventually
be
able
to
automatically
generate
realistic

visuals
within
Meta’s
chat
tools
similar
to
how
people
use
the
Midjourney
AI
app
within
the
Discord
messaging
service.

The
company’s
new
Meta
AI
digital
assistant
is
like
ChatGPT,
which
generates
sophisticated
answers
to
text
queries.
The
digital
assistant
can
access


Microsoft’s
Bing
search
engine
to
help
it
compile
responses
to
prompts
that
require
real-time
information,
Zuckerberg
said.

Meta
has
partnered
with
various
celebrities
like
Paris
Hilton,
Mr.
Beast
and
Kendall
Jenner
to
represent
digital
characters.
For
example,
users
can
ask
a
digital
assistant
named
Lorena
—
played
by
the
celebrity
Padma
Lakshmi
—
questions
related
to
travel,
and
Lorena
will
presumably
offer
travel-specific
tips.
Or
they
can
play
a
game
of
Dungeons
&
Dragons
with
a
narrator
called
a
dungeon
master
played
by
the
rapper
Snoop
Dog.

Zuckerberg
said
users
will
eventually
be
able
to
create
their
own
digital
assistants,
but
the
company
wants
to
test
that
ability
with
select
businesses
before
rolling
it
out
more
widely.

The
grand
plan
is
for
people
to
interact
with
these
AI-powered
digital
assistants
in
the
company’s
yet-to-be
built
metaverse,
the
digital
universe
that’s
costing
Meta
billions
of
dollars
a
quarter
as
it
tries
to
create
the
next-generation
computing
platform.

While
Zuckerberg
is
still
all-in
on
the
metaverse,
he’s
talking
a
lot
more
about
AI
than
at
past
Connect
conferences.
He
said
the
company’s
AI
investments
are
linked
with
building
the
foundation
for
the
metaverse,
as
illustrated
by
its
latest
Ray-Ban
smart
glasses
developed
with


EssilorLuxottica.
The
new
glasses,
which
will
cost
$299
when
they’re
available
to
purchase
on
Oct.
17,
come
embedded
with
Meta’s
AI
software
so
people
can
identify
landmarks
or
translate
signs
when
looking
at
various
objects.

“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,”
Zuckerberg
said.

Now,
he
said,
“I
think
that
the
AI
part
of
this
is
going
to
be
just
as
important,”
because
AI
makes
smart
glasses
more
compelling.

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