California/Hyderabad: Meta held its annual Connect 2023 event at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, unveiling a host of groundbreaking technologies. The two-day event, initially set to commence at 10:00 AM PT or 10:30 PM IST on Wednesday, experienced a half-hour delay.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage, revealing the much-anticipated Meta Quest 3 and its updated pricing. The Quest 3's price has been raised by $200, now starting at $500, with a massive 512GB variant available for $650.
Zuckerberg showcased various AI advancements, notably the Emu image generator, creating images in under 5 seconds and custom stickers for Meta Messenger. Another highlight was the introduction of Meta Al, a generative AI assistant based on the powerful Llama 2 language model. This AI marvel brings forth 28 chatbots with unique personalities and backstories, embodying figures like Charli D'Amelio, Snoop Dogg, Kendall Jenner, and Mr.Beast.
A final revelation was the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, a groundbreaking product featuring an on-board AI assistant, Meta Al. Users can now seamlessly integrate AI into their daily lives, utilizing the glasses for translations, object recognition, and more while on the move.
Mark Zuckerberg also shared all the updates of the event on his Instagram broadcast channel. One by one, he unveiled all the new tools and features.
Quest 3- The Meta CEO embarked the event with the highly anticipated Meta Quest 3, the first mainstream mixed reality headset. The company claims it to be their most powerful headset yet and it blends the physical and virtual worlds. The headset is 40% thinner and much more comfortable than other headsets, with 2x the graphics performance.
"Quest 3 maps the room you're in so you can play virtual games like building Legos on your table, and if you need to duck some incoming fire you can hide behind your physical couch", Zuckerberg informed on his broadcast channel.
Some of the awesome content coming to Quest, mentioned by Zuckerberg included Lego Bricktales, Stranger Things, Live sports on Xtadium, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Asgard's Wrath 2, and many more.
