Now it’s Meta’s turn to show the world what they’ve been working on.
Meta Connect kicks off on Wednesday afternoon, and the tech industry is excited to see the reveal of some flashy new hardware.
The annual developers conference hosted by Facebook’s parent company is expected to feature AI announcements, updates to the metaverse, and even the unveiling of new smart glasses.
This will be Meta’s first keynote since adding AI to its Ray-Ban smart glasses, which it developed through a partnership with luxury eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica.
During the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the smart glasses are seeing “strong growth” and selling better than expected.
Still, Meta’s VR, AR and metaverse division, Reality Labs, is losing money. Zuckerberg has positioned both AI and the metaverse as long-term bets that could take years to turn a profit. Meta has previously said it expects spending to exceed revenue “due to ongoing product development efforts and investments to further expand the ecosystem.”
The Connect keynote could be a chance for Meta to show off to investors some of the projects it’s rumored to be working on, such as an updated model of its Quest headset (which it puts in direct competition with Apple’s Vision Pro) and a long-rumored prototype of AR glasses, known internally as Project “Orion.”
Meta’s AI chatbots are integrated into apps like Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, and we can expect updates on these efforts as the company looks to keep users within its ecosystem.
We will be live blogging the event on Meta’s Facebook page at 1pm.
