Meta introduces an AI helper and Facebook-streaming spectacles

On Wednesday, Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled new AI products for consumers, including photo-realistic image bots and smart glasses that answer queries, as well as an improved virtual-reality headset.

Zuckerberg highlighted the technologies as bridging the virtual and real worlds, emphasizing that Meta provided low-cost or free AI that could be integrated into daily life. Meta's Quest is the best-selling VR title, and the company's management described it as the best value in the industry, a nod to Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) planned introduction of a far more expensive device.

Speaking from a central courtyard on Meta's huge Silicon Valley facility, Zuckerberg said that a new generation of Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, priced at $299, would begin delivering on Oct. 17. The device will include a new Meta AI assistant and will be capable of livestreaming broadcasts of what the user is viewing directly to Facebook and Instagram, a significant improvement above the previous generation's capacity to shoot images.

Zuckerberg delivered his remarks at the Meta Connect conference, the social media company's biggest event of the year and its first in-person gathering since the outbreak began.

He also announced that the next Quest mixed-reality headset would be available on October 10th, as well as the company's first consumer-facing generative AI products. The latter includes Meta AI, a chatbot that can generate text responses as well as photo-realistic pictures.

"Sometimes we innovate by releasing something that's never been seen before," Zuckerberg stated. "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 will be embedded into smart glasses as an assistant, with a beta rollout beginning in the United States. A software update scheduled for next year will enable the assistant to recognize places and items that people see, as well as do language translation.

Meta AI was created using a proprietary model based on the company's strong Llama 2 large language model, which was released for public commercial usage in July. According to Zuckerberg, the chatbot will have real-time information thanks to a cooperation with Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Bing search engine.

In an interview with Reuters, Meta Global Affairs President Nick Clegg stated that the business has taken precautions to filter private information from the data used to train the model, as well as put limitations on what the tool might generate, such as a ban on the generation of realistic photographs of famous personalities.

"We've tried to exclude datasets that have a heavy preponderance of personal information," Clegg explained, citing LinkedIn as one example of a website whose content was purposefully avoided.