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Meta to preview first true AR glasses at Connect

conference

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AI updates include celebrity voices for Meta's chatbot

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First commercial AR glasses expected to ship in 2027,

source

says

By Katie Paul

Sept 25 (Reuters) - Facebook owner Meta

prepared on Wednesday to kick off its annual Connect conference

at its California headquarters, where it is expected to preview

its first augmented reality glasses and announce updates to its

existing virtual reality and artificial intelligence products.

Among those AI updates is an audio upgrade offering users

the option to select a voice for Meta's ChatGPT-like chatbot,

including the ability to make it sound like celebrities

including Judi Dench and John Cena, Reuters reported on Monday.

The augmented reality reveal is a long time in the making

for Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who positioned AR

technology as a sort of magnum opus when he first pivoted the

world's biggest social media company toward building immersive

"metaverse" systems in 2021.

However, Meta has struggled to overcome technical challenges

with its AR project since then, prompting the head of the

company's metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division to

acknowledge last year that a product it could viably bring to

market was "still a few years away - a few, to put it lightly."

The company has been plowing tens of billions of dollars

into its investments in artificial intelligence, augmented

reality and other metaverse technologies, driving up its capital

expense forecast for 2024 to a record high of between $37

billion and $40 billion.

Its metaverse unit Reality Labs lost $8.3 billion in the

first half of this year, according to the most recent

disclosures. It lost $16 billion last year.

The social media giant is planning for the first generation

of the AR glasses this year to be distributed only internally

and to a select group of developers, with each device costing

tens of thousands of dollars to produce, according to a source

familiar with the project.

Meta aims to ship its first commercial AR glasses to

consumers in 2027, by which point technical breakthroughs should

bring down the cost of production, the source said.

The source spoke on condition of anonymity because they were

not authorized to discuss company plans.

Zuckerberg appeared to confirm that approach, describing the

AR work and telling an audience at a live taping of the Acquired

podcast in San Francisco that Meta was "pretty close to being

able to show off the first prototype that we have of that."

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment on

the plans.

In the meantime, Meta has leaned into an unexpected interim

success on the road to AR with its camera-equipped Ray-Ban Meta

smart glasses.

Riding a wave of excitement around emerging generative AI

technology, the company announced at last year's Connect

conference that it was adding an AI-powered digital assistant to

the glasses, turning a once-forgotten device into the most

popular AI wearable on the market.

Although Meta has not disclosed sales numbers for the smart

glasses, the CEO of Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica

said this summer that more of the new generation sold in a few

months than the old ones did in two years. Market research firm

IDC estimates that more than 700,000 pairs of the glasses have

shipped since the update last year.

Meta recently extended its partnership with EssilorLuxottica

and contemplated a possible investment in the eyewear company,

prompting speculation that the AR glasses may also bear the

Ray-Ban name. More immediately, Meta's roadmap for the smart

glasses includes plans for a next generation that will feature a

viewfinder capable of displaying basic text and images through

the lenses.

It has been shipping software updates this year enhancing

the AI assistant's capabilities on the existing glasses,

including an update in April that enabled the agent to identify

and converse about objects seen by the wearer.