Meta’s Sound and Vision

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 575 Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Undeterred by its many detractors, Meta is still trying to make the metaverse happen. This week, the company held its annual Connect developer conference at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage to announce a new mixed reality headset, the Meta Quest 3, as well as new smart glasses made by Ray-Ban that let the wearer livestream videos and interact with an AI-powered voice chatbot. Meta also showed off an array of celebrity-infused AI chatbots that can mimic big-name folks like Snoop Dogg and Kendall Jenner. You'd be forgiven for thinking all this feels a little bit like an episode of Black Mirror.

This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with WIRED senior AI writer Khari Johnson about the mixed reality hardware Meta announced this week, its voice-controlled smart glasses, its weird new AI chatbots, and where the company sits in the great AI arms race.

Show Notes:

Read Khari’s story about Meta’s many AI chatbots. Read Lauren’s story about the upcoming Meta Quest 3 headset and chatbot-enabled Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

Recommendations:

Khari recommends the new movie The Creator. Lauren recommends the ‘90s movie Sliding Doors. Mike also recommends a ‘90s movie, Dazed and Confused.

Khari Johnson can be found on social media @kharijohnson. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lauren.
0:01.0	Mike.
0:02.0	Are you live streaming this podcast on Instagram from your new Rayban Meta Smart Glasses?
0:07.0	I'm starting to get a sense of what you think about me.
0:11.0	No, I do not have a pair of the new Rayban Meta Smart Glasses.
0:15.0	I'm sorry to disappoint you.
0:17.0	Can you ask the Meta AI Assistant for a good ramen recipe for me?
0:20.0	I have in fact used some kind of voice assistant on meta glasses, which is a weird thing to say.
0:25.2	But no, I don't have access to any of this stuff right now.
0:28.5	No smart glasses, no brand new VR headsets and currently no chat pots.
0:33.5	Well, I thought Mark Zuckerberg said that we're already living in the future.
0:45.6	If it's his vision of the future, yes. We're not currently all living in it, but we should probably talk about what that future might hold. I am down. Let's do it.
1:00.0	Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Michael Colori. I'm a senior editor at Wired.
1:03.6	And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired, not yet replaced by AI.
1:09.0	We are also joined today by Wired senior writer Kari Johnson. Hi, Kari. Welcome back to the show.
1:10.7	Hey, thanks for having me back.
1:16.2	Welcome back to studio. Thank you. Our AI reporter, also not yet replaced by AI.
1:22.4	Not yet. Not yet. That's all we can ever say. This week, Meta held its big developer conference at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, which is right in the heart of Silicon Valley.
1:27.1	The show is called Meta Connect, and it was hosted by, of course, the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
1:32.8	Developer conferences like these are where companies talk about all the hardware and the software stuff they've got coming in the near future.
1:38.9	At Metacconnect, the company announced two new pieces of hardware, the MediQuest 3 VR headset and a new pair
1:46.2	of smart glasses from Rayban.
	...

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