Meta unveils AI assistant, Facebook-streaming glasses

AFP

Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday rolled out new AI merchandise for customers, together with bots that create photo-realistic photographs and sensible glasses that reply questions, in addition to an up to date virtual-reality headset.

Zuckerberg described the merchandise as bringing collectively digital and actual worlds, and underscored that a part of what Meta provided was low value or free AI that would combine into every day routine. Meta’s Quest is the bestseller within the nascent VR area and the corporate’s executives described it as the very best worth within the trade, a nod to the upcoming launch of a way more costly headset from Apple.

Speaking from a central courtyard on Meta’s sprawling Silicon Valley campus, Zuckerberg mentioned a brand new technology of Meta’s Ray-Ban sensible glasses would begin transport on October 17, priced at $299.

The gadget will incorporate a brand new Meta AI assistant and be able to livestreaming broadcasts of what a person is seeing on to Facebook and Instagram, an development over the earlier technology’s potential to snap images.

Zuckerberg spoke on the Meta Connect convention, the social media firm’s largest occasion of the yr in addition to its first in-person convention for the reason that begin of the pandemic.

He additionally mentioned the newest Quest mixed-reality headset would begin transport on October 10 and launched the corporate’s first consumer-facing generative AI merchandise. The latter features a chatbot known as Meta AI that may generate each textual content responses and photo-realistic photographs.

“Sometimes we innovate by releasing something that’s never been seen before,” Zuckerberg mentioned. “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.”

Meta AI might be inbuilt to the sensible glasses as an assistant, beginning with a beta rollout within the United States. A software program replace deliberate for subsequent yr will give the assistant the flexibility to establish locations and objects that persons are seeing, in addition to to carry out language translation.

Meta made Meta AI utilizing a customized mannequin primarily based on the highly effective Llama 2 giant language mannequin that the corporate launched for public business use in July. The chatbot can have entry to real-time info through a partnership with Microsoft’s Bing search engine, Zuckerberg mentioned.

In an interview with Reuters, Meta Global Affairs President Nick Clegg mentioned the corporate had taken steps to filter non-public particulars from the info used to coach the mannequin and likewise imposed restrictions on what the device may generate, like a ban on the creation of lifelike photographs of public figures.

“We’ve tried to exclude datasets that have a heavy preponderance of personal information,” Clegg mentioned, citing LinkedIn for instance of a web site whose content material was intentionally not used.