Imagine putting on a pair of glasses and wearing a wristband that tracks your thoughts by detecting electrical impulses out of your skin. Instantly, your sight view overlaps with the digital world. You see holograms (3D digital avatars of real people), can project your personal hologram, and even take calls and play games while still with the ability to see what’s happening within the physical space around you.
This is the long run Mark Zuckerberg wants. At Meta Connect on Wednesday, Meta’s CEO unveiled Orion, the primary fully functional prototype of the corporate’s holographic glasses.
Meta claims that it’s “the most advanced pair ever made.”
Mark Zuckerberg wears Orion glasses. Photo credit: Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images
Zuckerberg has already promoted these glasses in previous interviews and told YouTuber Kallaway in July that Orion and the accompanying bracelet with a neural interface had caused “dizziness” among the many first testers.
At Meta Connect, the glasses were delivered to Zuckerberg on stage in a metal case. Zuckerberg explained that he began putting together a team a few decade ago to develop glasses that weigh lower than 100 grams, are wireless, have a large field of view, support holographic displays, are vivid enough to see in several lighting conditions, and could be seen through.
“This is the physical world with holograms superimposed on top,” Zuckerberg said.
Related: Mark Zuckerberg explains AI higher than his competitors – and Meta can outperform Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft
In addition, the glasses needed to support neural tracking.
“I think you need a device that allows you to send a signal from your brain to the device,” Zuckerberg said, adding that Orion “is not just the first full-screen, wide-field-of-view holographic AR glasses.”
“These are the first glasses controlled by a wristband that records thoughts,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg and his team have achieved “most” of the goals they set out to realize with Orion. But before this prototype hits the shelves, Meta still must refine it. Employees and choose external testers have access to Orion starting today, as the corporate working on Creating a greater display, making the glasses smaller and minimizing costs.
“We still have a few things we need to push forward before we ship this as a consumer product,” Zuckerberg said, adding that the glasses are best considered “a time machine.”
Orion suits into Zuckerberg’s broader strategy for smart glasses. The Ray-Ban Meta AI smart glasses that Meta introduced at Connect last yr were a surprise success. exceeds the sales figures of the previous generation within the second yr in only a number of months.
Related: She sent an unsolicited email to Meta reviewing Ray-Bans and now heads the wearables division.
“For a while we struggled to keep up with demand,” Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. “But now we have it under control.”
Zuckerberg’s plan for the Ray-Ban Meta glasses is to continuously update the AI and the feel and look. Over the subsequent few months, the glasses will receive a lot of AI updates, including one which makes communicating with the Meta AI concerning the product more natural and conversational (so that you do not have to maintain saying “Hey Meta”) and one other that adds real-time help from the Meta AI with multimodal video (so you’ll be able to look in your closet and ask the AI what outfit you need to wear to a celebration).
According to Zuckerberg, Meta AI has about 500 million monthly lively users and is on the right track to be probably the most widely used AI assistant by the tip of this yr.
“This is the beginning of something big,” Zuckerberg enthused.
Related: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang calls Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the long run of AI a “home run idea”
