Meta Set to Unveil AR Glasses and AI Innovations at Connect 2024 Event

Meta readies AR glasses reveal at Connect event

Meta is set to unveil its first augmented reality glasses and announce updates to its virtual reality and AI products at its annual Connect conference. The AR glasses, initially for internal use, are expected to be commercially available by 2027. Meta's investment in these technologies has significantly increased its capital expenses.Facebook owner Meta prepared on Wednesday to kick off its annual Connect conference at its California headquarters, where it is expected to preview its first augmented reality glasses and announce updates to its existing virtual reality and artificial intelligence products. Among those AI updates is an audio upgrade offering users the option to select a voice for Meta's ChatGPT-like chatbot, including the ability to make it sound like celebrities including Judi Dench and John Cena, Reuters reported on Monday. The augmented reality reveal is a long time in the making for Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who positioned AR technology as a sort of magnum opus when he first pivoted the world's biggest social media company toward building immersive "metaverse" systems in 2021. However, Meta has struggled to overcome technical challenges with its AR project since then, prompting the head of the company's metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division to acknowledge last year that a product it could viably bring to market was "still a few years away - a few, to put it lightly." The company has been plowing tens of billions of dollars into its investments in artificial intelligence, augmented reality and other metaverse technologies, driving up its capital expense forecast for 2024 to a record high of between $37 billion and $40 billion. Its metaverse unit Reality Labs lost $8.3 billion in the first half of this year, according to the most recent disclosures. It lost $16 billion last year. The social media giant is planning for the first generation of the AR glasses this year to be distributed only internally and to a select group of developers, with each device costing tens of thousands of dollars to produce, according to a source familiar with the project. Meta aims to ship its first commercial AR glasses to consumers in 2027, by which point technical breakthroughs should bring down the cost of production, the source said. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss company plans. Zuckerberg appeared to confirm that approach, describing the AR work and telling an audience at a live taping of the Acquired podcast in San Francisco that Meta was "pretty close to being able to show off the first prototype that we have of that." Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the plans. In the meantime, Meta has leaned into an unexpected interim success on the road to AR with its camera-equipped Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Riding a wave of excitement around emerging generative AI technology, the company announced at last year's Connect conference that it was adding an AI-powered digital assistant to the glasses, turning a once-forgotten device into the most popular AI wearable on the market. Although Meta has not disclosed sales numbers for the smart glasses, the CEO of Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica said this summer that more of the new generation sold in a few months than the old ones did in two years. Market research firm IDC estimates that more than 700,000 pairs of the glasses have shipped since the update last year. Meta recently extended its partnership with EssilorLuxottica and contemplated a possible investment in the eyewear company, prompting speculation that the AR glasses may also bear the Ray-Ban name. More immediately, Meta's roadmap for the smart glasses includes plans for a next generation that will feature a viewfinder capable of displaying basic text and images through the lenses. It has been shipping software updates this year enhancing the AI assistant's capabilities on the existing glasses, including an update in April that enabled the agent to identify and converse about objects seen by the wearer.

Meta readies AR glasses reveal at Connect event

(Reuters) - Facebook owner Meta prepared on Wednesday to kick off its annual Connect conference at its California headquarters, where it is expected to preview its first augmented reality glasses and announce updates to its existing virtual reality and artificial intelligence products. Among those AI updates is an audio upgrade offering users the option to select a voice for Meta's ChatGPT-like chatbot, including the ability to make it sound like celebrities including Judi Dench and John Cena, Reuters reported on Monday. The augmented reality reveal is a long time in the making for Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who positioned AR technology as a sort of magnum opus when he first pivoted the world's biggest social media company toward building immersive "metaverse" systems in 2021. However, Meta has struggled to overcome technical challenges with its AR project since then, prompting the head of the company's metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division to acknowledge last year that a product it could viably bring to market was "still a few years away - a few, to put it lightly." The company has been plowing tens of billions of dollars into its investments in artificial intelligence, augmented reality and other metaverse technologies, driving up its capital expense forecast for 2024 to a record high of between $37 billion and $40 billion. Its metaverse unit Reality Labs lost $8.3 billion in the first half of this year, according to the most recent disclosures. It lost $16 billion last year. The social media giant is planning for the first generation of the AR glasses this year to be distributed only internally and to a select group of developers, with each device costing tens of thousands of dollars to produce, according to a source familiar with the project. Meta aims to ship its first commercial AR glasses to consumers in 2027, by which point technical breakthroughs should bring down the cost of production, the source said. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss company plans. Zuckerberg appeared to confirm that approach, describing the AR work and telling an audience at a live taping of the Acquired podcast in San Francisco that Meta was "pretty close to being able to show off the first prototype that we have of that." Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the plans. In the meantime, Meta has leaned into an unexpected interim success on the road to AR with its camera-equipped Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Riding a wave of excitement around emerging generative AI technology, the company announced at last year's Connect conference that it was adding an AI-powered digital assistant to the glasses, turning a once-forgotten device into the most popular AI wearable on the market. Although Meta has not disclosed sales numbers for the smart glasses, the CEO of Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica said this summer that more of the new generation sold in a few months than the old ones did in two years. Market research firm IDC estimates that more than 700,000 pairs of the glasses have shipped since the update last year. Meta recently extended its partnership with EssilorLuxottica and contemplated a possible investment in the eyewear company, prompting speculation that the AR glasses may also bear the Ray-Ban name. More immediately, Meta's roadmap for the smart glasses includes plans for a next generation that will feature a viewfinder capable of displaying basic text and images through the lenses. It has been shipping software updates this year enhancing the AI assistant's capabilities on the existing glasses, including an update in April that enabled the agent to identify and converse about objects seen by the wearer. (Reporting by Katie Paul in San Francisco; Editing by Kenneth Li and Shri Navaratnam)

Meta AR Glasses, ChatGPT like Chatbot Reveal, and More: Connect 2024 Announcements

Meta Platforms Inc. is expected to release its highly anticipated AR glasses soon. The company made this announcement at the recent Meta Connect Conference 2024. The conference will be taking place at Meta's Menlo Park headquarters. The company is also expected to announce updates to its existing virtual reality and artificial intelligence products at the event. Sources are stating that one of the crucial showpieces of this conference will be Meta's first commercial AR glasses. It is expected that a complete consumer version of these glasses will come out in 2027 though initial units are reserved for developers and internal testing. This is a slow-going process, in that Meta has spent billions of dollars in Reality Labs, trying to find its way into the metaverse. Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said that he was rather optimistic about the AR project. Zuckerberg admitted that despite the tremendous challenges faced in the process, the company is on the cusp of showing a prototype that would work. This comes at a time when Meta's Reality Labs unit has reported significant losses in the very first half of this year. The losses have accounted for nearly US$8.3 billion in losses.

What to expect from the Meta Connect 2024 event

From smart Ray-Ban glasses to a stripped-back version of the Quest 3 headset, here is what we could see from Meta. Meta will unveil its latest technologies at its annual Connect developer conference on Wednesday. The Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp parent company could showcase its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. The conference comes two weeks after Apple demonstrated its AI software at its own developer conference, as well as updated hardware. Meta will likely discuss how it will improve its Llama 3.1 large language model (LLM), which is trying to rival Google and OpenAI's models. It first came out in July and according to Meta, costs roughly half that of OpenAI's GPT-4o to run in production. It is also an open source model, and released the model weights so that companies can train it on custom data and modify it to their liking. Meta will also announce its AI chatbot will have a voice, according to Reuters, which reported that celebrities Judi Dench, Kristen Bell, John Cena, Awkwafina and Keegan-Michael Key will lend their voices to Meta's AI. AI and AR But Meta, which invested heavily in the metaverse and even changed its name to reflect this virtual reality technology, is trying to combine AI and AR (augmented reality). Meta is focusing on augmented reality glasses, which were possibly seen in the background of a photo CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted in February, which he later said they would "be ready to share more [about] later this year". It comes after the release of the Ray-Ban smart glasses in 2021. Meta said this month it had extended a long-term partnership with the Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica. VR Headset? The company reportedly killed a next-generation mixed-reality headset, which was meant to compete with the Apple Vision Pro. As for virtual reality (VR), Meta is stripping back its Quest 3 headset and will release the Quest 3S, according to Blomberg's Mark Gurman who also said the company is aiming to make it cheaper than the current version at a cost of around $300 to $400 (€260 to €360). We will have to wait until the Connect event to find out more, which will be at 19:00 CET.