Meta putting AI in smart glasses, assistants and more

MENLO PARK, United States — Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday said the tech giant is putting artificial intelligence into digital assistants and smart glasses as it seeks to gain lost ground in the AI race.

Zuckerberg made his 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 as he kicked off the gathering.

"And smart glasses are going to eventually allow us to bring all of this together into a stylish form factor that we can wear."

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 will have a starting price of $299 when they hit the market on October 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."

Meta also introduced 28 "AIs" 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 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