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Meta’s Ray-Ban branded smart glasses are getting AI-powered reminders and translation features

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Meta’s AI assistant has always been the most intriguing feature of its second-generation Ray-Ban smart glasses. While the generative AI assistant had fairly limited capabilities when the glasses launched last fall, the addition of real-time information and multimodal capabilities offered a range of new possibilities for the accessory.

Now, Meta is significantly upgrading the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses’ AI powers. The company showed off a number of new abilities for the year-old frames onstage at its Connect event, including reminders and live translations.

With reminders, you’ll be able to look at items in your surroundings and ask Meta to send a reminder about it. For example, “hey Meta, remind me to buy that book next Monday.” The glasses will also be able to scan QR codes and call a phone number written in front of you.

In addition, Meta is adding video support to Meta AI so that the glasses will be better able to scan your surroundings and respond to queries about what’s around you. There are other more subtle improvements. Previously, you had to start a command with “Hey Meta, look and tell me” in order to get the glasses to respond to a command based on what you were looking at. With the update though, Meta AI will be able to respond to queries about what’s in front of you with more natural requests. In a demo with Meta, I was able to ask several questions and follow-ups with questions like “hey Meta, what am I looking at” or “hey Meta, tell me about what I’m looking at.”

When I tried out Meta AI’s multimodal capabilities on the glasses last year, I found that Meta AI was able to translate some snippets of text but struggled with anything more than a few words. Now, Meta AI should be able to translate longer chunks of text. And later this year the company is adding live translation abilities for English, French, Italian and Spanish, which could make the glasses even more useful as a travel accessory.

And while I still haven’t fully tested Meta AI’s new capabilities on its smart glasses just yet, it already seems to have a better grasp of real-time information than what I found last year. During a demo with Meta, I asked Meta AI to tell me who is the Speaker of the House of Representatives — a question it repeatedly got wrong last year — and it answered correctly the first time.

Catch up on all the news from Meta Connect 2024!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/metas-ray-ban-branded-smart-glasses-are-getting-ai-powered-reminders-and-translation-features-173921120.html?src=rss

Meta’s Ray-Ban branded smart glasses are getting AI-powered reminders and translation features

Posted on by

Meta’s AI assistant has always been the most intriguing feature of its second-generation Ray-Ban smart glasses. While the generative AI assistant had fairly limited capabilities when the glasses launched last fall, the addition of real-time information and multimodal capabilities offered a range of new possibilities for the accessory.

Now, Meta is significantly upgrading the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses’ AI powers. The company showed off a number of new abilities for the year-old frames onstage at its Connect event, including reminders and live translations.

With reminders, you’ll be able to look at items in your surroundings and ask Meta to send a reminder about it. For example, “hey Meta, remind me to buy that book next Monday.” The glasses will also be able to scan QR codes and call a phone number written in front of you.

In addition, Meta is adding video support to Meta AI so that the glasses will be better able to scan your surroundings and respond to queries about what’s around you. There are other more subtle improvements. Previously, you had to start a command with “Hey Meta, look and tell me” in order to get the glasses to respond to a command based on what you were looking at. With the update though, Meta AI will be able to respond to queries about what’s in front of you with more natural requests. In a demo with Meta, I was able to ask several questions and follow-ups with questions like “hey Meta, what am I looking at” or “hey Meta, tell me about what I’m looking at.”

When I tried out Meta AI’s multimodal capabilities on the glasses last year, I found that Meta AI was able to translate some snippets of text but struggled with anything more than a few words. Now, Meta AI should be able to translate longer chunks of text. And later this year the company is adding live translation abilities for English, French, Italian and Spanish, which could make the glasses even more useful as a travel accessory.

And while I still haven’t fully tested Meta AI’s new capabilities on its smart glasses just yet, it already seems to have a better grasp of real-time information than what I found last year. During a demo with Meta, I asked Meta AI to tell me who is the Speaker of the House of Representatives — a question it repeatedly got wrong last year — and it answered correctly the first time.

Catch up on all the news from Meta Connect 2024!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/metas-ray-ban-branded-smart-glasses-are-getting-ai-powered-reminders-and-translation-features-173921120.html?src=rss

Meta will stop selling the Quest 2 and Quest Pro by the end of the year

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Meta just revealed the budget-friendly Quest 3S VR headset at its annual Connect keynote event, but it also made a sad announcement about some of its previous headsets. The company will stop selling both the Quest 2 and the Quest Pro by the end of the year.

“With Quest 3S on the shelf, we’re officially winding down sales of Quest 2 and Pro. We’ll be selling our remaining headsets through the end of the year or until they’re gone, whichever comes first,” the company wrote in a blog post that also announced the pending launch of the Quest 3S.

The company will be selling Quest 2 and Pro accessories for “a bit longer” after the stock of headsets runs out. This includes the carrying case, the Touch Pro controllers and bundles like the Quest 2 Active Pack. Meta recently lowered the price of the Quest 2 to $200, and it’s still a decent headset for beginners. The Quest 3S is better in every way, but it starts at $300, while the standard Quest 3 costs $500.

It’s the end of an era for the Quest 2. This was a hugely successful headset, as it launched during the dog days of COVID-19. For many, it became a crucial item to survive endless isolation, along with stuff like Zoom and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. 

It’s the end of an error (see what I did there?) for the Quest Pro. This headset never caught on, likely because it was originally priced at $1,500 before being quickly lowered to $1,000. It still costs a grand from Meta, but can typically be found for around $900 via Amazon and other retailers.

As they say, out with the old and in with the new. The Quest 3S is, essentially, the new Quest 2. It starts at $300, boasts the same CPU as the original Quest 3 and handles full-color passthrough.

Catch up on all the news from Meta Connect 2024!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-will-stop-selling-the-quest-2-and-quest-pro-by-the-end-of-the-year-173704500.html?src=rss

Meta will stop selling the Quest 2 and Quest Pro by the end of the year

Posted on by

Meta just revealed the budget-friendly Quest 3S VR headset at its annual Connect keynote event, but it also made a sad announcement about some of its previous headsets. The company will stop selling both the Quest 2 and the Quest Pro by the end of the year.

“With Quest 3S on the shelf, we’re officially winding down sales of Quest 2 and Pro. We’ll be selling our remaining headsets through the end of the year or until they’re gone, whichever comes first,” the company wrote in a blog post that also announced the pending launch of the Quest 3S.

The company will be selling Quest 2 and Pro accessories for “a bit longer” after the stock of headsets runs out. This includes the carrying case, the Touch Pro controllers and bundles like the Quest 2 Active Pack. Meta recently lowered the price of the Quest 2 to $200, and it’s still a decent headset for beginners. The Quest 3S is better in every way, but it starts at $300, while the standard Quest 3 costs $500.

It’s the end of an era for the Quest 2. This was a hugely successful headset, as it launched during the dog days of COVID-19. For many, it became a crucial item to survive endless isolation, along with stuff like Zoom and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. 

It’s the end of an error (see what I did there?) for the Quest Pro. This headset never caught on, likely because it was originally priced at $1,500 before being quickly lowered to $1,000. It still costs a grand from Meta, but can typically be found for around $900 via Amazon and other retailers.

As they say, out with the old and in with the new. The Quest 3S is, essentially, the new Quest 2. It starts at $300, boasts the same CPU as the original Quest 3 and handles full-color passthrough.

Catch up on all the news from Meta Connect 2024!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-will-stop-selling-the-quest-2-and-quest-pro-by-the-end-of-the-year-173704500.html?src=rss

Meta AI can now talk to you and edit your photos

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Over the last year, Meta has made its AI assistant so ubiquitous in its apps it’s almost hard to believe that Meta AI is only a year old. But, one year after its launch at the last Connect, the company is infusing Meta AI with a load of new features in the hopes that more people will find its assistant useful.

One of the biggest changes is that users will be able to have voice chats with Meta AI. Up till now, the only way to speak with Meta AI was via the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. And like last year’s Meta AI launch, the company tapped a group of celebrities for the change.

Meta AI will be able to take on the voices of Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan Michael Key and Kristen Bell, in addition to a handful of more generic voices. While the company is hoping the celebrities will sell users on Meta AI’s new abilities, it’s worth noting that the company quietly phased out its celebrity chatbot personas that launched at last year’s Connect.

In addition to voice chat support, Meta AI is also getting new image capabilities. Meta AI will be able to respond to requests to change and edit photos from text chats within Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. The company says that users can ask the AI to add or remove objects or to change elements of an image, like swapping a background or clothing item.

Meta is testing AI-generated content recommendations in the main feed of Facebook and Instagram.
Meta is testing AI-generated content recommendations in the main feed of Facebook and Instagram.
Meta

The new abilities arrive alongside the company’s latest Llama 3.2 model. The new iteration, which comes barely two months after the Llama 3.1 release, is the first to have vision capabilities and can “bridge the gap between vision and language by extracting details from an image, understanding the scene, and then crafting a sentence or two that could be used as an image caption to help tell the story.” Llama 3.2 is “competitive” on “image recognition and a range of visual understanding tasks” compared with similar offerings from ChatGPT and Claude, Meta says.

The social network is testing other, potentially controversial, ways to bring AI into the core features of its main apps. The company will test AI-generated translation features for Reels with “automatic dubbing and lip syncing.” According to Meta, that “will simulate the speaker’s voice in another language and sync their lips to match.” It will arrive first to “some creators’ videos” in English and Spanish in the US and Latin America, though the company hasn't shared details on rollout timing.

Meta also plans to experiment with AI-generated content directly in the main feeds on Facebook and Instagram. With the test, Meta AI will surface AI-generated images that are meant to be personalized to each users’ interests and past activity. For example, Meta AI could surface an image “imagined for you” that features your face.

Catch up on all the news from Meta Connect 2024!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-ai-can-now-talk-to-you-and-edit-your-photos-172853219.html?src=rss

Meta AI can now talk to you and edit your photos

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Over the last year, Meta has made its AI assistant so ubiquitous in its apps it’s almost hard to believe that Meta AI is only a year old. But, one year after its launch at the last Connect, the company is infusing Meta AI with a load of new features in the hopes that more people will find its assistant useful.

One of the biggest changes is that users will be able to have voice chats with Meta AI. Up till now, the only way to speak with Meta AI was via the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. And like last year’s Meta AI launch, the company tapped a group of celebrities for the change.

Meta AI will be able to take on the voices of Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan Michael Key and Kristen Bell, in addition to a handful of more generic voices. While the company is hoping the celebrities will sell users on Meta AI’s new abilities, it’s worth noting that the company quietly phased out its celebrity chatbot personas that launched at last year’s Connect.

In addition to voice chat support, Meta AI is also getting new image capabilities. Meta AI will be able to respond to requests to change and edit photos from text chats within Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. The company says that users can ask the AI to add or remove objects or to change elements of an image, like swapping a background or clothing item.

Meta is testing AI-generated content recommendations in the main feed of Facebook and Instagram.
Meta is testing AI-generated content recommendations in the main feed of Facebook and Instagram.
Meta

The new abilities arrive alongside the company’s latest Llama 3.2 model. The new iteration, which comes barely two months after the Llama 3.1 release, is the first to have vision capabilities and can “bridge the gap between vision and language by extracting details from an image, understanding the scene, and then crafting a sentence or two that could be used as an image caption to help tell the story.” Llama 3.2 is “competitive” on “image recognition and a range of visual understanding tasks” compared with similar offerings from ChatGPT and Claude, Meta says.

The social network is testing other, potentially controversial, ways to bring AI into the core features of its main apps. The company will test AI-generated translation features for Reels with “automatic dubbing and lip syncing.” According to Meta, that “will simulate the speaker’s voice in another language and sync their lips to match.” It will arrive first to “some creators’ videos” in English and Spanish in the US and Latin America, though the company hasn't shared details on rollout timing.

Meta also plans to experiment with AI-generated content directly in the main feeds on Facebook and Instagram. With the test, Meta AI will surface AI-generated images that are meant to be personalized to each users’ interests and past activity. For example, Meta AI could surface an image “imagined for you” that features your face.

Catch up on all the news from Meta Connect 2024!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-ai-can-now-talk-to-you-and-edit-your-photos-172853219.html?src=rss

Meta AI can now talk to you and edit your photos

Posted on by

Over the last year, Meta has made its AI assistant so ubiquitous in its apps it’s almost hard to believe that Meta AI is only a year old. But, one year after its launch at the last Connect, the company is infusing Meta AI with a load of new features in the hopes that more people will find its assistant useful.

One of the biggest changes is that users will be able to have voice chats with Meta AI. Up till now, the only way to speak with Meta AI was via the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. And like last year’s Meta AI launch, the company tapped a group of celebrities for the change.

Meta AI will be able to take on the voices of Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan Michael Key and Kristen Bell, in addition to a handful of more generic voices. While the company is hoping the celebrities will sell users on Meta AI’s new abilities, it’s worth noting that the company quietly phased out its celebrity chatbot personas that launched at last year’s Connect.

In addition to voice chat support, Meta AI is also getting new image capabilities. Meta AI will be able to respond to requests to change and edit photos from text chats within Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. The company says that users can ask the AI to add or remove objects or to change elements of an image, like swapping a background or clothing item.

Meta is testing AI-generated content recommendations in the main feed of Facebook and Instagram.
Meta is testing AI-generated content recommendations in the main feed of Facebook and Instagram.
Meta

The new abilities arrive alongside the company’s latest Llama 3.2 model. The new iteration, which comes barely two months after the Llama 3.1 release, is the first to have vision capabilities and can “bridge the gap between vision and language by extracting details from an image, understanding the scene, and then crafting a sentence or two that could be used as an image caption to help tell the story.” Llama 3.2 is “competitive” on “image recognition and a range of visual understanding tasks” compared with similar offerings from ChatGPT and Claude, Meta says.

The social network is testing other, potentially controversial, ways to bring AI into the core features of its main apps. The company will test AI-generated translation features for Reels with “automatic dubbing and lip syncing.” According to Meta, that “will simulate the speaker’s voice in another language and sync their lips to match.” It will arrive first to “some creators’ videos” in English and Spanish in the US and Latin America, though the company hasn't shared details on rollout timing.

Meta also plans to experiment with AI-generated content directly in the main feeds on Facebook and Instagram. With the test, Meta AI will surface AI-generated images that are meant to be personalized to each users’ interests and past activity. For example, Meta AI could surface an image “imagined for you” that features your face.

Catch up on all the news from Meta Connect 2024!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-ai-can-now-talk-to-you-and-edit-your-photos-172853219.html?src=rss

How to pre-order the Meta Quest 3S VR headset

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Meta has announced a new virtual reality headset, and it's called the Quest 3S. As rumored, this is a lower-cost variant of the Meta Quest 3, which we consider the best VR headset for most people. At $300, it looks to be a suitable entry-level replacement for the popular but aging Quest 2. Meta is aiming it squarely at VR newbies, those upgrading from an older headset and anyone else who's been holding out for a more affordable option — if you're thinking about taking the plunge, here's what to know before you pre-order.

To make way for the new headset, Meta has discontinued the Quest 2 and more expensive Quest Pro. The company says both headsets will remain available either through the end of the year or until stock runs out. It plans to sell official accessories for the two "for a bit longer," though. 

The Quest 3, meanwhile, will now include 512GB of storage at its standard $500, giving it another advantage over its new sibling. Previously, the higher-capacity Quest 3 cost $650, while the base model came with 128GB of space. Meta will now sell that 128GB model for $430, but only while supplies last. If you order a 512GB Quest 3 by April 30, you can get the same Batman: Arkham Shadow bundle included with the Quest 3S.

Catch up on all the news from Meta Connect 2024!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/how-to-pre-order-the-meta-quest-3s-vr-headset-171958398.html?src=rss

How to pre-order the Meta Quest 3S VR headset

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Meta has announced a new virtual reality headset, and it's called the Quest 3S. As rumored, this is a lower-cost variant of the Meta Quest 3, which we consider the best VR headset for most people. At $300, it looks to be a suitable entry-level replacement for the popular but aging Quest 2. Meta is aiming it squarely at VR newbies, those upgrading from an older headset and anyone else who's been holding out for a more affordable option — if you're thinking about taking the plunge, here's what to know before you pre-order.

To make way for the new headset, Meta has discontinued the Quest 2 and more expensive Quest Pro. The company says both headsets will remain available either through the end of the year or until stock runs out. It plans to sell official accessories for the two "for a bit longer," though. 

The Quest 3, meanwhile, will now include 512GB of storage at its standard $500, giving it another advantage over its new sibling. Previously, the higher-capacity Quest 3 cost $650, while the base model came with 128GB of space. Meta will now sell that 128GB model for $430, but only while supplies last. If you order a 512GB Quest 3 by April 30, you can get the same Batman: Arkham Shadow bundle included with the Quest 3S.

Catch up on all the news from Meta Connect 2024!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/how-to-pre-order-the-meta-quest-3s-vr-headset-171958398.html?src=rss

Meta reveals the budget-friendly Quest 3S VR headset

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Meta has announced the budget-friendly Quest 3S VR headset at its annual Connect keynote. Rumors have been swirling for months that the company was working on a cheaper follow-up to the impressive Quest 3, and now it’s here and priced at $300.

This is pretty dang close to the original Quest 3, which costs $500. The latest headset uses the same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen2 processor and boasts 8GB of RAM, so it can easily handle Quest 3 exclusives like the forthcoming Batman: Arkham Shadow. It offers the same full-color passthrough for mixed reality apps and games and ships with the same controllers as last year’s model. The refresh rate also hovers between 90Hz and 120Hz. 

A picture of the headset.
Meta

The external sensors/cameras also seem nearly identical to the standard Quest 3. There are two RGB cameras to create the stereoscopic color passthrough and four VGA cameras for hand tracking and controller tracking. These also help determine user movements and position in 3D space. Finally, there are two flood LEDs for illumination.

So what’s the catch? Meta has to make up for that lost $200 somehow. First of all, there are no pancake lenses and there’s no 4K content. These look to be the same Fresnel lenses as found with the Meta Quest 2, with a resolution of 1832 x 1920 per eye and 20 PPD (pixels per degree.) The field of view is also slightly reduced when compared to the regular Quest 3 headset.

The storage gets a major hit. The base model comes with 128GB, though there’s a 256GB model available for $400. Meta has lowered the price of the 512GB Quest 3 to $500, from $650, so the entry-level 3S features around a quarter of the storage.

On the plus side, the battery life is actually a bit better with the Quest 3S when compared to the Quest 3. Meta says it should get around 2.5 hours of use per charge, compared to 2.2 hours with the Quest 3.

There’s also a nice little bonus for the holiday season. Customers who orders any Quest 3 or 3S model will get a free digital copy of Batman: Arkham Shadow when it’s released this October. The company did the same thing with the criminally underrated Asgard’s Wrath 2 last year. The promotion goes until April.

The Quest 3S works with most Quest 3 accessories, which is good news because it also ships with the standard, and totally uncomfortable, headstrap. That Elite Strap is a wise investment, especially the one with the battery.

Preorders are open right now and there’s a shipping date of October 15. With the pending release of the Quest 3S, Meta’s phasing out the Quest 2 and the Quest Pro. The Zuck gives and the Zuck takes.

Catch up on all the news from Meta Connect 2024!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-reveals-the-budget-friendly-quest-3s-vr-headset-171843107.html?src=rss