Meta Connect 2024 live updates: News on the Meta Quest 3S, Orion AR headset and Meta AI features for Ray-Ban glasses

Zuckerberg has left the stage, and we're watching a video to close us out. I have to say, I appreciate a quick keynote.

And we're out. Thanks for joining us folks!

As expected, Zuckerberg says Orion isn't quite ready to be a consumer device yet. He says they need to make it more affordable, along with other improvements. Notably, he hasn't said a word about battery life, which will be important. Those waveguide displays are not kind to battery life. Instead, it will be available as a developer kit to some partners,

This is a cool demo, but this thing looks like it's years away from being ready for consumers. It's going to be used as an internal dev kit, as well as handful of external partners. I'd wager these units easily cost close to $10,000.

"With Orion, we're getting closer to achieving the dream of Reality Labs," Zuckerberg says

Apparently Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was an early tester of Orion, he has a big cameo in Meta's video of people trying them out.

In addition to hand and eye-tracking, these glasses have a neural interface — another technology that Meta has been experimenting with for a long time. A wrist-based controller will allow you to interact with the UI

Meta has been working on this a long time and it seems they've already come up with some cool uses cases, like letting you video chat with holograms of your friends.

Orion uses tiny projectors to shoot holograms onto the glasses. Fascinating.

It's hard to tell based on what's on the screen but the field of view looks similar to Snap's AR Spectacles (obviously, I won't be able to confirm until I get a full demo) which is to say: this likely won't be fully immersive AR.

I wonder what Apple thinks about all of this. Orion looks like the end goal for the Vision Pro.

Zuckerberg is holding the company's "Orion" prototype. They look thick but not nearly as bulky as Snap's new AR Spectacles that I saw last week.

Orion is real, and they look like super chonky hipster frames.

And now the moment we've been waiting for, it looks like we're about to get a demo of the long-rumored AR glasses.

Here we go, one more thing...

Meta is releasing a special limited edition of its Ray-Ban glasses with transparent frames. The crowd seems very excited for these. Zuckerberg said when they launched, they wanted to make the tech look more subtle but now people have more of an appreciation for it.

Another cool update: The full range of EssilorLuxottica transition lenses will work with Ray-BV

This is cool. Meta is partnering with "be My Eyes" an app that helps people who are blind and low vision

Zuckerberg is now demoing real-time audio translations with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses (with the help of an MMA star, of course). This is very cool. The glasses could already translate bits of text but the ability to translate audio in real-time is much more powerful. These glasses were already a great travel accessory but I think they just got even better on that fr

Conversation lag with these real time translations tools will always be awkward, but still, cool demo

Another big update: Meta AI will be able to use video to power multimodal queries, This means it can respond dynamically as you move around rather than just staring at something static

Some new AI updates are coming to the glasses, including the ability to speak to Meta Ai more naturally. You can ask follow-ups without saying "hey Meta" every time and don't always have to say "look and tell me." Meta Ai will also be able to "look" at something and send you a reminder. It will also be able to scan QR codes and text phone numbers you see.

Very surprised Meta AI couldn't control other apps like Spotify before. I'm sure those voice commands will be useful.

Interesting that Zuckerberg refers to Meta's smart glasses an "AI device." I think that's very telling about how Meta thinks of this product even if most people aren't primarily using the AI features.

Zuckerberg just announced Llama 3.2, which he said will be available everywhere except the EU. He added, somewhat sarcastically, that he's "eternally optimistic" Meta will be able to sort out its differences with EU regulators.

On one hand, the tech behind automatic AI dubbing and lip syncing is very cool. On the other, I'm SO tired of social media videos entirely voiced by AI.

We're now getting a look at how Meta will use AI to automatically dub creators' videos on Reels and match their their words with automated lip syncing so it looks like they are speaking the translated language. We saw a demo with English and Spanish and Zuckerberg says they are planning more languages soon.

Meta actually introduced these custom creator AIs earlier this year. The idea is that you can outsource responding to your followers to AI. But now instead of chatbots, creators can create a photorealistic AI version of themself that can actually talk so it looks like you're actually video chatting with them. This is pretty wild.

Don Allen Stevenson III is one of the first creators to make a text-based AI. His AI has been answering a lot of frequently asked questions from folks.

It seems like a bit of a risk considering the celebrity-branded chatbots that debuted last year were quietly phased out earlier this year after a less than stellar response from users.

"Thanks Awkwafina," is something we'll all be saying soon.