STORY: :: Meta
MARK ZUCKERBERG: “This is Orion…”
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled “Orion,” the first working prototype of the company’s augmented reality glasses, on Wednesday at the company’s annual Connect conference.
“It's a completely new kind of display architecture with these tiny projectors and the arms, the glasses that shoot light into waveguides, that have nanoscale 3D structures etched into the lenses so that they can refract light and put holograms at different depths and sizes into the world for you.”
Users can interact with the glasses via hand tracking, speech and a neural interface on the wrist.
Zuckerberg said Meta plans to make Orion smaller, sleeker and cheaper before the device hits the consumer market.
Zuckerberg positioned AR technology as a kind of magnum opus when he first pivoted to building immersive “metaverse” systems in 2021.
However, product delivery is hampered by high development costs and technological hurdles.
The company’s metaverse unit Reality Labs lost $8.3 billion in the first half of this year, according to the latest disclosures. Last year, it lost $16 billion.
Meta also announced a range of new AI chatbot capabilities.
Meta AI now responds to voice commands, and users can choose to make the assistant sound like celebrities like Judi Dench, John Cena, and Awkwafina.
ZUCKERBERG: “Are live demos risky?”
META AI USES AWKWAFINA'S VOICE: “Live demos can be risky. Yes.”
ZUCKERBERG: “Thanks, Awkwafina.”
Later this year, the company also plans to add video generation capabilities and the ability to perform real-time translations.
