Meta pushes MR devices to compete with Apple AI robots implanted in social products

Jiang Yue, reporter of Southern Finance and Economics All Media Shanghai reported that on the morning of September 27, Western Time in the United States, Meta held the 2023 Connect Conference at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. MR (mixed reality) and AI in the metaverse became the focus of founder and CEO Zuckerberg's introduction.

At the meeting, Zuckerberg unveiled the company's first mixed reality headset, which entered the mass market with a starting price of $499.99, or will compete with similar products from Apple to be launched early next year. In addition, Zuckerberg also introduced the progress in AI, its chatbot "belated", is expected to allow the company's about 4 billion social media users to experience the function of conversational AI, and will also demonstrate the power of the company's self-developed Llama 2 models.

On September 27, Meta's share price on the NASDAQ edged down 0.41% to close at $297.74. So far this year, Meta's share price has risen by 147.42%.

Compete with Apple for mixed reality devices

Quest 3 is the first product introduced by Zuckerberg in his speech, which is also Meta's first product for "mixed reality", which is different from previous generations of products that cannot be transparent to light and biased towards VR. In addition, the Quest 3 is expected to compete with Apple's Vision Pro, which debuted on June 6 and will be available in early 2024.

In terms of functionality, both the Quest 3 and Vision Pro have VR and MR switching functions. However, the Quest 3 has a transparent screen, unlike the Vision Pro, which is shot through an external camera and real-time development allows the wearer to see the outside world.

In terms of price, the Quest 3 starts at $499.99, while the Vision Pro starts at a whopping $3499. Zuckerberg specifically emphasized that the Quest 3 is the first mixed reality device "for the mass market."

On the display, the Quest 3 uses a 4k+ infinity display, while the Vision Pro uses a 4K micro-OLED display.

In terms of hand operation, the Quest 3 still relies on physical hardware, using two handheld controllers called Touch Plus, while Vision Pro does not rely on hand physics at all, only requiring motion to operate the virtual screen and keyboard.

In addition, Zuckerberg introduced that the Quest 3 uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip, and its GPU processing power is twice that of the Quest 2. As a result, the new generation of devices will better accelerate gaming, remote video conferencing and more.

Finally, in terms of delivery time, Meta is also "one step ahead" than Apple. The Quest 3 is now available for pre-order and will ship on October 10, while the Vision Pro won't be available in individual countries until early 2024.

In order to increase the functionality of Quest 3, Meta chose to cooperate with Microsoft, and Microsoft's Xbox cloud game will land on the Quest platform in December.

In response to the "regret" that this headset is still bulky, Meta has also taken another route: cooperating with the well-known eyewear company Ray-Ban. At the end of the entire conference, Zuckerberg introduced the smart glasses.

The glasses have audio and a camera, and the wearer can "live" the content of the glasses in real time on Meta's social media apps Facebook and Instagram. In addition, the glasses are also implanted with a Meta AI function, which can start a conversation with the voice robot by calling "Hey Meta". In terms of battery life, if used with a glasses case, it can be used for up to 36 hours.

The glasses, which look just like everyday glasses, start at $299 and are expected to be available in both online and offline retail stores on October 17.

Meta AI unveiled

AI chatbots continue to develop, and Zuckerberg also announced that the Meta AI chatbot is officially unveiled to change the way people use a variety of Meta's products. In addition, Meta has also launched a developer platform AI Studio to promote more people to train AI.

Meta AI will be embedded in Meta's WhatApp, Instagram and Messenger, which also means that many people who have not used other chatbots before will be exposed to generative AI for the first time through Meta AI. This chatbot can perform text and image processing.

According to Meta statistics, as of the end of June, the number of monthly active people (MAP) of all Meta's applications was 3.88 billion.

The big model behind Meta AI is Llama 2, which is also the latest generation of Meta's open source language big model.

In addition, Meta has also launched 28 artificial intelligence characters in its app, some of which are based on real-world sports stars, rappers, and social celebrities, such as football star Tom Brady and "Internet celebrity" Pallis Hilton.

Since September, several companies have announced new advances in generative AI tools. On September 19, Google released an update to the chatbot Bard, which will be implanted in Google's email service Gmail and cloud document service Docs; On the 20th, Amazon said that it will soon enable voice assistant Alexa to achieve near-human conversations; On the 20th, OpenAI also announced that it will bring the image generator DALL· E3 integrated into ChatGPT; On the 21st, Microsoft announced that it plans to embed the generative artificial intelligence assistant Copilot into more products; On the 25th, OpenAI announced that it will launch a new version of ChatGPT, adding the ability to interact with images.

Finally, regarding the developer platform AI Studio, which is a platform that makes it easier for enterprises and developers to build and train custom bots, it means that Meta wants to enable customers to make customized products in areas such as e-commerce and customer support.

At the Connect conference, Zuckerberg said that Meta will create different artificial intelligence products for different uses, rather than treating chatbots as a single flagship product. Regarding the launch of the Meta AI assistant, he said that this is not to entertain and convey information, and the most important thing is that "it will change the way people use all our products".

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