Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Take super intelligence seriously. This is going to be the
Speaker 2: most important technology in our lifetimes. AI should serve people,
Speaker 2: not just be something that sits in a data center
Speaker 2: automating large parts of society. So we design our glasses
Speaker 2: to be able to empower people with new capabilities as
Speaker 2: soon as they become possible.
Speaker 1: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. They're at Metaconnect last night unveiling
Speaker 1: a host of new AIPOWD wearables and features for its
Speaker 1: metaverse platform, including glasses. Mark reaction, Well, we're up about
Speaker 1: a percentage point on the day. We're about to hear
Speaker 1: from Chris Cox in a moment, but first I want
Speaker 1: to bring in Bloomberg's Riley Griffin, and the market reaction
Speaker 1: is Bank of America saying, look, this is still an
Speaker 1: eight hundred dollars ar glasses still early for adoption. But
Speaker 1: then you've got cities saying these must have and a
Speaker 1: clear extension of the superintelligence by Riley.
Speaker 3: How do you assess it, Caroline? It's a great question,
Speaker 3: and I'm eager to hear from Chris Cox about how
Speaker 3: he's used the market reaction as well. This is a
Speaker 3: first of its kind glass for Meta. This is an
Speaker 3: AI powered display on the glasses that should bring a
Speaker 3: lot of the functionality of your phone. But importantly it
Speaker 3: still requires the phone itself and a neural wristband. So
Speaker 3: whether than not this becomes a mass consumer product we'll
Speaker 3: still have to see, but it as an innovation is
Speaker 3: certainly a big unveiling by the company.
Speaker 1: Let's get to the company, Blue Mos Riley Griffin, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for that analysis. We've got to get
Speaker 1: out to metas headquarters in Menlo Park now where our
Speaker 1: own ed Ludlow is standing by.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks Cara. A year ago today almost I was
Speaker 4: sat here having spent six hours with the engineering team
Speaker 4: that we're working on a Ryan a fully ormented glasses
Speaker 4: that was being dog fooded internally, right, this was about testing.
Speaker 4: Fast forward to today and we have a halfway the
Speaker 4: Meta ray band display smart glasses with a display in
Speaker 4: the lens, and the reaction has been this is a
Speaker 4: consumer technology innovation worth talking about. So delighted to do
Speaker 4: so with Chris Cox, Messa's chief product officer. I think
Speaker 4: that context is really important, right, the evolution from oryan
Speaker 4: to this halfway point. But my question to start is
Speaker 4: who is this targeted at, right? You have generations of
Speaker 4: prior generation meta ray band wearers or is this a
Speaker 4: new entry people starting from scratch.
Speaker 5: I think it'll probably be some combination of both. So,
Speaker 5: just because we're talking about it here, these are the
Speaker 5: meta ray ban displays. You can see. We've worked with
Speaker 5: ray Band to get them into the form factor that
Speaker 5: people are comfortable wearing. This is the most worn design
Speaker 5: for a pair of sunglasses or glasses. And so we're
Speaker 5: starting with something we didn't want to put something onto
Speaker 5: the market that was clunky. We're starting with something that's really,
Speaker 5: really nice. And I also just mention there's a wave
Speaker 5: guide in here, okay, which a wave guide being basically
Speaker 5: it's light that's being projected through a series of mirrors
Speaker 5: into a small display that appears just below your right eye.
Speaker 5: And you can actually change where that is.
Speaker 4: It's eight hundred dollars, right, that's right. But the emphasis
Speaker 4: over and over again is like this is a consumer product. Yes,
Speaker 4: it's not for engineers, that's right. What is the one
Speaker 4: killer feature in it then that you think is going
Speaker 4: to appeal messaging? Just messaging, Well, that's how he uses it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, messaging, i'd say is going to be the
Speaker 5: most useful. To start, it comes with this wristband, which
Speaker 5: is an EMG wristband. You wear it around your wrist.
Speaker 5: It detects very subtle muscular and nervous system sort of activity,
Speaker 5: so that you can just use a tiny gesture with
Speaker 5: your fingertips to control Essentially a cursor controls the display.
Speaker 5: So we've worked to get into something that means that
Speaker 5: you can use a display in glasses without needing to
Speaker 5: wave your hands around in the world or care around
Speaker 5: and mouse or something.
Speaker 4: And this is why evolution is important. The neural band
Speaker 4: is directly from the Iran project that I remember experimenting
Speaker 4: with the technology one year ago.
Speaker 5: So the R and D here is you have the
Speaker 5: north Star, which you've seen, which is Oriyan like you said,
Speaker 5: and then you're also working forwards from what we know
Speaker 5: people are comfortable wearing, which is the ray bands. I
Speaker 5: think we're going to see early adopters pick it up
Speaker 5: to your question, Yes, I think we're going to see
Speaker 5: enthusiasts like you were mentioning to me before. You wear
Speaker 5: the meta ray bands a fair amount.
Speaker 4: App but I wear them when I'm driving well, that's
Speaker 4: a thing because the display in the ray band display right,
Speaker 4: obviously if you're driving, not the best use kits not
Speaker 4: intended for driving. Last night, you did live demos. Some
Speaker 4: of them didn't go very well, but you're getting a
Speaker 4: lot of credit for doing live demos, just very simply
Speaker 4: and for transparency. What did go wrong in those demos?
Speaker 5: I haven't looked into them. I believe it was the
Speaker 5: Wi Fi. We're trying to have these events where we're
Speaker 5: not canning them. We know people don't want something that's canned,
Speaker 5: so we're airing on the side of trying to do
Speaker 5: it live.
Speaker 4: I've got a question from our audience. Yeah, ray band display.
Speaker 4: Will it be available for prescription lensers? Yes? And why
Speaker 4: was that important? This is a question that's come up
Speaker 4: a lot with raybans.
Speaker 5: Well, just we know around one to two billion people
Speaker 5: on Earthware glasses. One of them are wearing them as sunglasses,
Speaker 5: and then a whole bunch of folks are wearing them
Speaker 5: with prescriptions.
Speaker 4: Chris, where are these going to be manufactured? I'm not
Speaker 4: one hundred percent sure, your chief product officer, and you
Speaker 4: don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's in a handful of places. The
Speaker 5: parts are assembled in a bunch of different places.
Speaker 4: Not China, or is there a sensitivity around supply chain
Speaker 4: hardware in China.
Speaker 5: I believe there's some work being done in China, but
Speaker 5: I'm not one hundred percent sure.
Speaker 4: What I'm always trying to understand with Meta is where
Speaker 4: the company stands today. At times and presently, I think
Speaker 4: about the family of apps. You ran Facebook, Those people
Speaker 4: that are religious users of Facebook or WhatsApp, what is
Speaker 4: their relationship to this new generation of hardware.
Speaker 5: So you'll be able to use WhatsApp on the device.
Speaker 5: We're trying to make sure that we're starting with communication,
Speaker 5: which is where the company comes from, making sure those
Speaker 5: products work well on the device. You're also able to
Speaker 5: view Instagram reels, which we know people love. We're trying
Speaker 5: to just get a handful of first party experiences right,
Speaker 5: and then eventually we'll be able to open that up.
Speaker 4: Mark was talking about this as the vehicle for super intelligence.
Speaker 4: But you also have a background in software, So this
Speaker 4: is the interface, This is how I interact with it.
Speaker 4: But what other AI features can we expect to come
Speaker 4: through this mechanism and the family of apps as well.
Speaker 5: We mentioned yesterday Translation Live translation, yes, including the ability
Speaker 5: to caption somebody or speaking to in a different language.
Speaker 5: We also mentioned the ability to focus a conversation. We're
Speaker 5: calling it conversation focus. So if you're in a crowded room,
Speaker 5: if you're at a party, if you're at a concert,
Speaker 5: you're able to focus in on the person who's speaking
Speaker 5: to you and get a clearer audio of that. And
Speaker 5: so all of those things involve applications of AI to
Speaker 5: bring these things to life in ways that are practical.
Speaker 4: I got a lot of questions from Meta users and
Speaker 4: the audience about what the developer community needs to know,
Speaker 4: but also your role in AI at Meta, what is
Speaker 4: it that you are focused on right now? Because we've
Speaker 4: reported a lot on the team changes the superintelligence team.
Speaker 4: From a product perspective, I think people really want to understand,
Speaker 4: like what is your focus and why are you going
Speaker 4: to bring more functionality to that.
Speaker 5: Well, so there's the wearables, but there's also creative tools.
Speaker 5: So the ways that people are creating video, creating content
Speaker 5: making that's really really easy. AI is going to make
Speaker 5: it a lot easier for folks to do that. And
Speaker 5: a huge part of what Facebook and Instagram are is
Speaker 5: just you know, viewing the content that we create for
Speaker 5: each other. So that's where we're expecting to lend a
Speaker 5: lot of the newest technology.
Speaker 4: Okay, so September thirtieth, it's very close and you will
Speaker 4: soon be able to if you wish to Caro get
Speaker 4: meta ray band displays. But the market one percent gain,
Speaker 4: I think you said. The reaction is that this is
Speaker 4: a genuine innovation in consumer technology, and so it'll be
Speaker 4: interesting to see out the gate who goes for it.
Speaker 4: Back to you in New York.
Speaker 1: Fascinating conversation with Chris Cops. We appreciated ed