By Nermeen Nabil 
Social media giant, Meta Platforms has announced an array of AI products that span across Ray-Bans, Llama, and more. The Facebook and Instagram parent company made the announcement at its Connect event.
The social media giant started off the Connect event with a raft of AI product offerings for its chatbot and plans to start injecting personalized images generated by the bot into users’ Facebook or Instagram feeds.
Meta is also rolling out AI features for reels, which includes video dubbing and lip-syncing which allows users to create their own content from across different languages.
Meta shows off Orion
During the Connect conference in California, the social media giant showed off the first working prototype of its AR glasses called Orion together with other existing VR and AI products. This was the highlight of the event.
According to Meta, Orion glasses combine the look and feel of ordinary glasses with the immersive capabilities of augmented reality.
“This is the physical world with holograms overlaid on,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg after pulling out the chunky black glasses from a metal case.
According to Reuters, the Orion glasses are made of alloy and powered by custom silicon which the company designed. With the Orion glasses previously code-named Project Nazare, users can interact through a hand-tracking voice and wrist-based neural interface.
According to Zuckerberg who referred to them as “dev kit,” the company is planning on making it smaller, sleeker, and more low-cost for consumers later. For now, the company is giving its employees and a select external audiences access to the glasses to allow the team to learn and get feedback.
Meta also revealed upgrades to business AIs that enable the tech to answer common customer questions, discuss products and finalize a purchase, helping businesses engage with more customers and increase sales.
Meta just announced a ton of new AI announcements across Meta AI, Llama, Ray-Bans, and more.
Here’s everything important announced live from here @ Meta Connect:
1. Meta AI is getting its own voice mode! pic.twitter.com/AF52eif5Fr
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) September 25, 2024
Meta introduces software upgrades
During the event, Meta also announced an assortment of software upgrades for its AI assistant driving interest in Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. With this update, it is now possible for users, for instance, to scan QR codes and stream music from Spotify in response to voice prompts.
Zuckerberg also demonstrated real time language translation indicating the company plans to add video capabilities and the ability to perform real-time translations between English and French, Italian or Spanish.
“We’re starting with small tests on Instagram and Facebook, translating some creators’ videos from Latin America and the US in English and Spanish, and we plan to expand this to more creators and languages,” said Meta.
Another update announced during the Connect event was an audio upgrade to its digital assistant, Meta AI. According to the tech giant, Meta AI will now respond to voice commands and allow users to make it sound like celebrities like John Cena and Judi Dench.
“I think that voice is going to be a way more natural way of interacting with AI than text.”
Zuckerberg.
More than 400 million across the globe are using Meta AI monthly, according to the company, as well as 185 million users returning to it weekly.
In line with its open-source models strategy, Meta debuted three new versions of Llama 3 models, two of them multi-modal, which means they can understand both images and texts. The third one is a basic text only model that can run entirely on a user’s device.
Nermeen Nabil Khear