Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at the company’s Connect developers conference on Wednesday that Meta is putting artificial intelligence into digital assistants and smart glasses as part of its effort to gain ground in the AI race.
The second-generation Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, made in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, will have a starting price of $299 when they hit the market on October 17. The glasses will have the ability to stream what users are seeing in real-time.
Meta also introduced 28 new AI chatbots that people can message on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. The chatbots have “personalities” based on celebrities including Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, and YouTube star MrBeast.
Zuckerberg demonstrated an interaction with one such AI from the stage in a type-written chat, promising that the new bots would soon be voiced.
The event was the first in-person edition of Connect since 2019, before the pandemic, and announcements on generative AI were widely expected.
Meta has taken a more cautious approach than its rivals Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google to push out AI products, prioritizing small steps and making its in-house models available to developers and researchers.
Source: PhilNews24 | September 28, 2023
