Mark Zuckerberg’s AI vision makes Metaverse a slightly easier sell

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse show has become an AI show. The makeover is apt.

The chief executive of Meta Platforms kicked off the company’s annual developers conference on Wednesday, showing off its latest headsets that now employ a mix of virtual reality and augmented reality technology. That has been the historic aim of the event, at least since the company once known as Facebook spent $2 billion to acquire VR headset maker Oculus in 2014. But the VR business mostly has been a dud.

Meta’s Reality Labs division that includes VR generated just over $2 billion in revenue for the 12 months ended in June—about what the company’s core advertising operation generates every five days. But the craze over generative artificial intelligence has given Zuckerberg another chance at remaking his company’s image—this time without the awkward name change. Wednesday’s announcements include the company’s digital assistant called Meta AI getting voices licensed from actors such as Awkwafina, John Cena, Judi Dench and Kristen Bell.

AI is also being incorporated into the latest hardware: The Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses that were launched late last year, and have actually been selling well, will soon include reminder notifications and the ability to translate conversations in real time. Those might seem to be modest developments relative to the efforts of Meta’s megacap tech peers. Microsoft, Google and Amazon have been in a mad race for more than a year to roll out new generative AI services for things like internet search and a variety of corporate uses.