At its annual Meta Connect conference on Wednesday, Meta unveiled a range of innovative products and services, including the Meta Quest 3 mixed reality headset and a new line of smart glasses developed in partnership with Ray-Ban. The event also marked the introduction of Meta AI, the company’s proprietary AI assistant, alongside various AI experiences embedded within Meta’s apps and devices, such as AI stickers for its platforms and editing tools for Instagram.
Meta AI is designed as a conversational generative assistant similar to offerings from OpenAI and Microsoft, and will be accessible on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. This AI assistant utilizes Meta’s custom model derived from its large language model, Llama 2, allowing it to provide instant information from online sources, including Bing search. Additionally, Meta AI can create images based on user-generated text prompts. Users can initiate tasks like planning hiking trips in group chats, generating recipes, or organizing shopping lists by typing “@MetaAI /imagine” followed by their requests. The assistant will also be integrated into both the Meta Quest 3 and the new Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
In further developments, Meta introduced AI avatars with unique personalities, featuring 28 distinct AI characters that users can interact with across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Among these characters are public figures and influencers, as Meta has collaborated with various famous personalities, including Dwayne Wade, Kendall Jenner, Mr. Beast, and Snoop Dogg, to bring their likenesses into the digital space.
Meta’s image generation capability is branded as the ‘expressive media universe’ or Emu. This tool allows users to rapidly create AI-generated stickers from text prompts within platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram. “It’s high-quality, photorealistic,” claimed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg during the announcement. He emphasized the speed of the tool, stating, “It takes five seconds to generate one of these,” indicating that users will soon see this feature launched for select English-speaking users in WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook Stories.
In addition to sticker creation, Meta revealed new AI-driven image editing tools, specifically two features named Restyle and Backdrop, which are powered by technology from the Emu system. Restyle functions as a customizable filter, adapting images based on user prompts, whether through a simple descriptor or more detailed nuance. Backdrop, as the name suggests, allows users to modify image backgrounds according to their specifications. Images edited with these tools will be marked to indicate their AI-generated nature. Meta announced that these features will be available in Instagram soon, although a specific release date was not provided.
