Meta Platforms Inc chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday said the tech giant is putting artificial intelligence (AI) into digital assistants and smart glasses as it seeks to gain lost ground in the AI race.
Zuckerberg made the announcements at the Connect developers conference at Meta’s headquarters in Silicon Valley, the company’s main annual product event.
“Advances in AI allow us to create different [applications] and personas that help us accomplish different things,” Zuckerberg said at the gathering.
Photo: AFP
“And smart glasses are going to eventually allow us to bring all of this together into a stylish form factor that we can wear,” he said
Smart glasses are one of the many ways that tech companies have tried to move beyond the smartphone as a user-friendly device, but so far with little success.
The second-generation Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses made in a partnership with EssilorLuxottica is supposed to have a starting price of US$299 when they hit the market on Oct. 17.
The smart glasses also add the ability for users to stream what they are seeing in real time, Zuckerberg said.
“Smart glasses are the ideal form factor for you to let AI assistants see what you’re seeing and hear what you’re hearing,” he said.
Meta also introduced 28 AI characters that people can message on WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram with “personalities” based on celebrities including Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton and YouTube star MrBeast.
Zuckerberg demonstrated an interaction with one such AI character from the stage in a type-written chat, promising that the new bots would soon be voiced.
“This is our first effort at training a bunch of AI that are a bit more fun,” Zuckerberg said.
“But look, this is early stuff and these still have a lot of limitations, which you will see when you use them.”
Meta has taken a much more cautious approach than its rivals Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google to push out AI products, prioritizing small steps and making its in-house models available to developers and researchers.
The company also unveiled the latest version of its Quest virtual reality headset with richer graphics, improved audio and the ability for a wearer to see their surroundings without taking the gear off.
“This is going to be a big game changer and a big capacity improvement for these headsets,” Zuckerberg said.
Quest 3 headsets are priced starting at US$499 and should begin shipping on Oct. 10, according to Meta.
This is substantially cheaper than Apple Inc’s Vision Pro, which is slated to cost a hefty US$3,499 when it becomes available early next year, in the US only.
Merida Industry Co (美利達) has seen signs of recovery in the US and European markets this year, as customers are gradually depleting their inventories, the bicycle maker told shareholders yesterday. Given robust growth in new orders at its Taiwanese factory, coupled with its subsidiaries’ improving performance, Merida said it remains confident about the bicycle market’s prospects and expects steady growth in its core business this year. CAUTION ON CHINA However, the company must handle the Chinese market with great caution, as sales of road bikes there have declined significantly, affecting its revenue and profitability, Merida said in a statement, adding that it would
MARKET LEADERSHIP: Investors are flocking to Nvidia, drawn by the company’s long-term fundamntals, dominant position in the AI sector, and pricing and margin power Two years after Nvidia Corp made history by becoming the first chipmaker to achieve a US$1 trillion market capitalization, an even more remarkable milestone is within its grasp: becoming the first company to reach US$4 trillion. After the emergence of China’s DeepSeek (深度求索) sent the stock plunging earlier this year and stoked concerns that outlays on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure were set to slow, Nvidia shares have rallied back to a record. The company’s biggest customers remain full steam ahead on spending, much of which is flowing to its computing systems. Microsoft Corp, Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc are
RISING: Strong exports, and life insurance companies’ efforts to manage currency risks indicates the NT dollar would eventually pass the 29 level, an expert said The New Taiwan dollar yesterday rallied to its strongest in three years amid inflows to the nation’s stock market and broad-based weakness in the US dollar. Exporter sales of the US currency and a repatriation of funds from local asset managers also played a role, said two traders, who asked not to be identified as they were not authorized to speak publicly. State-owned banks were seen buying the greenback yesterday, but only at a moderate scale, the traders said. The local currency gained 0.77 percent, outperforming almost all of its Asian peers, to close at NT$29.165 per US dollar in Taipei trading yesterday. The
The US overtaking China as Taiwan’s top export destination could boost industrial development and wage growth, given the US is a high-income economy, an economist said yesterday. However, Taiwan still needs to diversify its export markets due to the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s administration, said Chiou Jiunn-rong (邱俊榮), an economics professor at National Central University. Taiwan’s exports soared to a record US$51.74 billion last month, driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products and continued orders, with information and communication technology (ICT) and audio/video products leading all sectors. The US reclaimed its position as Taiwan’s top export market, accounting for
RSS