Reuters reports that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, introduced a range of groundbreaking AI-driven products designed to bridge the gap between virtual and real worlds. The announcement came during the Meta Connect conference, the company’s largest event of the year, and marked its first in-person gathering since the onset of the pandemic.
The highlight of the reveal was the latest iteration of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, set to hit the market on October 17th at a competitive price of $299. This revamped device will feature an integrated Meta AI assistant and boasts the ability to livestream real-time visuals directly to Facebook and Instagram, a significant upgrade from its predecessor’s photo capture capability.
Zuckerberg emphasized that a central tenet of Meta’s vision was the provision of cost-effective or even free AI integration into daily routines. The Meta Quest, currently the top-seller in the burgeoning VR market, was lauded by company executives as the best value offering in the industry. This commendation was in anticipation of Apple’s imminent release of a higher-priced headset.
The latest Quest mixed-reality headset is slated to ship on October 10th, promising an enhanced immersive experience. Alongside this hardware release, Meta introduced their inaugural consumer-oriented generative AI products. Among these innovations is the Meta AI chatbot, capable of generating both text responses and astonishingly realistic images.
Speaking at the sprawling Silicon Valley campus, Zuckerberg stated, “Sometimes we innovate by releasing something that’s never been seen before. But sometimes we innovate by taking something that is awesome, but super expensive, and making it so it can be affordable for everyone or even free.”
The integration of Meta AI into the smart glasses will kick off with a beta rollout in the United States, with plans for a subsequent software update slated for next year. This update will equip the assistant with the ability to identify objects and locations in a user’s field of vision, as well as facilitate seamless language translation.
