Tag: Meta

Meta, the parent company of Mark Zuckerberg that houses Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram under its umbrella, seems to be preparing a long-term project with which, through a titanic Artificial Intelligence, they will index their huge video ecosystem, one of the ones that generates the most traffic within their services and that, in fact, will involve processing an immense amount of data.

Through this ambitious project, Meta intends for users to have a rich content assistance, especially considering the algorithm that is responsible for recommending videos to users based on their tastes and interests. In this way, the company wants to ensure that users spend more time looking at screens within their applications.

An AI to enhance video assistance

As explained by CNBC, a company executive stated that Meta is making a significant investment in a large-scale AI that is capable of processing all video content within its applications. This is part of a roadmap focused on 2026, aiming to increase user engagement with Reels.

Taking into account that Facebook and Instagram have a large percentage of their traffic and screen time on their Reels videos, this tool would serve them to ensure that the content they show to users is to their liking, thanks to the superior processing of the hypothetical AI. In this way, Meta’s apps would offer more popular results than those of the currently established algorithms, which may not be as accurate.

The fever of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has been on a meteoric upward trend in recent years, both in investment and in general interest from society. Part of this is due to the fact that this technology continues to grow at an astonishing rate, and these systems are already capable of performing tasks and functions that, just 5 years ago, were barely imaginable.

But, as it is evident, every light has a shadow. Artificial Intelligence can be impressive in technical aspects, but it has also become a dangerous tool due to the crimes it facilitates with its access, or that puts many job sectors at risk due to the greed of top executives and the great effectiveness of these tools compared to human labor, which in many cases cannot compete on equal terms against these systems that still lack regulation.

A report from Business Insider states that Mark Zuckerberg’s company plans to showcase a demonstration of augmented reality smart glasses at the end of this fall at Meta Connect. This product would have nothing to do with what they currently have on the market.

The glasses, internally called “Orion”, are a different product from the recently launched Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and Meta Quest. The first product, although it includes some beta features of multimodal audio AI and a camera, does not have visual elements of AR.

On the other hand, Meta Quest glasses are mainly used for virtual reality games and a handful of mixed reality experiences. What would make these Orion glasses a “true” augmented reality device is the fact that they are supposed to be more technologically advanced, but we don’t know much more.

Meta presentará sus primeras gafas de realidad aumentada, Orion, durante su conferencia para desarrolladores de otoño. https://t.co/7I3K8JacMG

— Business Insider España (@BIEspana) February 28, 2024

Meta wants to compete with Apple in its new field

The report suggests that there is a lot of internal pressure in Meta to deliver a high-quality demonstration and that some people within the company have been experimenting with advanced prototypes.

That being said, it doesn’t seem like the Orion glasses are ready for the general public yet. According to Business Insider, although the glasses will be showcased at Meta Connect, they won’t be available to the public.

Alex Heath, from The Verge, reported last year that the company planned an “internal” launch of the glasses in 2024, while the public launch was scheduled for 2027. Before that date, it is more likely that we will see a third generation of Ray-Ban smart glasses in 2025, with a “neural interface band” as an input device.

Any demonstration would probably be a means of whetting the public’s appetite for what is to come. Cultural norms also have to adapt to these products, which is why we are seeing companies like Meta and Apple now releasing more specialized mixed reality products.

zuck becoming more and more human-like day by day is a proof that AI improving pic.twitter.com/aGPvDPxXmN

— blob (@moanaris) February 27, 2024

One of the reasons why Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses seem to be working well is the fact that they have a familiar format and cover certain niches, such as content creation, surprisingly well.

As some media outlets wonder, should Meta present a demonstration of a pair of smart augmented reality glasses this year? It would be a smart move to convince us that living in the future of augmented reality is worth it.

It seems that Meta is not entirely satisfied with the volume of posts on Threads, since, since its popular launch, this application has moved away from the general interest of users. For that reason, the company led by Mark Zuckerberg has been testing a new button on Facebook that will allow users to duplicate posts on Threads that users carry out on Facebook.

This is a button that can be activated and deactivated at will, so users will not be forced to post on Threads if they do not want to. Likewise, if users activate this button, they can deactivate it without any problem when they do not want certain posts to appear on the platform that aimed to attract an audience interested in the X or Twitter format.

Facebook Posts and Threads at the Same Time

This new button, shown by a user within Threads, shows how Facebook has already developed this button that, when activated, will allow users to have the content they publish on Facebook also shared in a cloned way on Threads.

This is not something new from Meta, as this button has also been available for a long time through Instagram so that published photos could also appear on Facebook. With this, just like on this occasion, the application duplicates the content on different platforms and allows a single publication to gain traffic in both ecosystems. A simple and effective solution that is especially interesting for Threads, which must compete to avoid irrelevance.

A complicated start

It is also important to note that Meta made a poor planning of the launch of Threads, a service that would end up being banned in the European Union for not being created in accordance with the security and privacy standards that govern member countries. This caused Threads to not reach many European countries until a few months ago, despite its launch taking place in June 2023.

Similarly, Threads also suffered a strong decline after a promising start. However, its blazing start was a mirage, as the application lost more than 80% of its initial traffic in less than 3 months, a figure that, despite everything, Mark Zuckerberg defended positively, stating that performance was still better than expected. Now, therefore, Threads is in the tough moment of firmly establishing its market, after being unable to overthrow the current X.

Meta, the company owned by Mark Zuckerberg, continues to work on offering improvements in each of the applications it makes available to users. In fact, WhatsApp already has betas in which improvements in the synergies between the messaging application and Instagram are being experimented with, making it easier to share content.

While WhatsApp’s main value lies in being a tool to chat with anyone you want, it also has an increasingly widespread social factor: its statuses (which are similar to Instagram stories), broadcast channels, improvements for groups… that’s why, with the goal of improving interactions between the two applications, it is important for WhatsApp and Instagram to improve this aspect.

Share WhatsApp content to Instagram

As some testers have explained to Wabetainfo, this new beta has as its main novelty the possibility of sharing as an Instagram story the content as a Status that you have published on WhatsApp, giving you the option to share the content simultaneously on both social networks without the need to navigate through Instagram to share the same content as on WhatsApp.

As in many other occasions, it is a low-caliber improvement that, despite its simplicity, can become an extremely useful tool for those who are interested in sharing the same content on different social networks. Thus, Meta can take advantage of its position as the owner of both applications to improve direct interactions between these two services.

Meta’s Roadmap

Meta is working at multiple levels across all its platforms. While in WhatsApp, satisfied with the success of the channels, they are now aiming for a lower profile for the news feed, they also strive to keep the video format strong on Facebook compared to its young competitors, and Instagram is now immersed in its Threads branch, which is finally available in Europe after over 6 months of adjustments to its legal policies to operate in European territory.

Therefore, it can be appreciated that Meta, currently, is in a quite advantageous position within social networks and, without major competitors apart from TikTok and YouTube, everything points to the company continuing to be a reference in social networks in the short and medium term.

Meta and Ray-Ban, a collaboration in which both companies are seeking to create smart glasses that break the market, are hinting that they will seek to make a strong impact by introducing Artificial Intelligence features into their device. With this, Meta plans to create a definitive wearable that has great qualities for everyday use.

Among other things, this AI would be able to translate conversations in real time, identify objects through the integrated lens in the glasses, and would be able to process all kinds of information to offer the user an unparalleled technology service that is worn.

Glasses with integrated AI

Meta is fully working on these glasses, which could become a phenomenon if they manage to achieve the expected result in their early access tests. These tests will only be carried out in the United States, but they will be key to determining the potential success of these smart glasses that, combining Ray-Ban’s design and Meta’s knowledge in the field of technology, could have one of the most revolutionary devices of the coming years.

The very Mark Zuckerberg has shown in a reel how these sophisticated glasses work, which, despite their high technology, also have great usability and any user will be able to handle them easily and skillfully through voice commands that will only recognize the owner’s registration.

Google already tried in the past

It’s been quite a while, but there may be some who remember how, ten years ago, Google was immersed in its supposedly revolutionary Google Glass, a pair of glasses whose idea was ahead of its time, without a doubt. If this project were carried out today, with advances in hardware, software, and Artificial Intelligence, a project of that magnitude could have succeeded unequivocally.

On the other hand, Google buried that project without bringing it to the market, as they found too many weaknesses in their product for strengths that were not yet polished enough. Now, however, seeing the performance of Meta’s experiment with Ray-Ban, there is no doubt that Google will pay close attention to decide whether or not to unearth that project that captured the attention of both insiders and outsiders ten years ago.

Meta, the company owned by Mark Zuckerberg and also overseeing Oculus, has decided to discontinue the service that allowed Meta Quest users to view notifications from their mobile devices. Without this small yet practical function, many users might feel a slight step back in the user experience offered by Meta’s VR service.

This recently disabled feature will force VR glasses users to take off their devices to check if there are any important notifications on their smartphones. However, users of Quest 3 won’t face significant issues thanks to Mixed Reality features, allowing them to see the real world while wearing the glasses.

Goodbye to notifications in VR

As detailed in the latest Meta patch notes, Quest devices will no longer have the ability to display phone notifications, a feature that had been available since its activation in 2021. After two years of service, this functionality is now being removed from Meta’s VR headset software across different models.

Meta holds one of the largest markets in Virtual Reality. Since their acquisition of Oculus in the past, various VR headset models have steadily improved and expanded their capabilities. Currently, the Meta Quest 3 stands as their latest model, attracting widespread attention.

The Meta Quest 3, quite a sensation

It’s been just over a month since the new Meta Quest 3 emerged, VR goggles that have shown there’s still plenty of room for advancement in this technological field. The Meta Quest 3 represents a significant qualitative leap compared to its predecessor, the Meta Quest 2, positioning itself as the most powerful VR goggles of the current technological generation.

One of the most striking aspects of the Meta Quest 3, aside from its upgraded specifications, is Mixed Reality. Combining Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality features, it allows you to use your Meta Quest 3 goggles in your real environment, engaging in unique interactions with your surroundings. This mode isn’t just multimedia-oriented; it also offers an incredibly immersive gaming experience.

Ethics and big companies don’t usually get along. Meta has once again shown this by dissolving its Responsible AI (RAI) team. Following this, they’ve allocated their resources to bolster the development of projects based on generative artificial intelligence.

According to The Information, members of the commission will transition to working on products based on generative AI, while others will focus on Meta’s AI infrastructure. Contrary to appearances, the conglomerate led by Zuckerberg asserts its intent to work on creating responsible AI (as explained on their own website).

Earlier this year, the team underwent a restructuring that significantly reduced the RAI’s capacity. This team had been active since 2019, but its initiatives always required lengthy negotiations before they could be implemented.

The purpose of the RAI was primarily to oversee the AI training process. The team would review the data used for such training to ensure it was diverse and appropriate. Despite the advancements in these systems, many end up causing issues. Among some of the most notable is the case of Instagram, whose algorithm promoted accounts with sexually abusive content to minors.

Among the ongoing projects at Meta is LlaMa, its own version of ChatGPT. It’s available for download and can be used in various fields. Currently, Meta is embroiled in legal battles in the United States. The reason? Being sued for the psychological harm caused by their platforms (Instagram, Facebook, etc.) on younger users.

Messenger, the messaging service linked to Facebook, is currently at the center of a legal battle between Meta and the European Union due to certain loopholes in its regulation. Europe, accusing Meta of gatekeeping due to its strategy concerning Messenger and Marketplace services, takes a starkly opposing stance against Zuckerberg’s company, which argues the situation as legitimate and inherent to Facebook’s chat service or user services within the same app.

For a long time, Facebook compelled users to download the Messenger app to chat with others on the platform, a practice that was irksome to millions of users. That’s why, aligning with the habits of the average user, it enabled the option for users to chat through Facebook without the need to install the Messenger service.

A legal issue

Meta has appealed its gatekeeper label both in the Messenger service and in the Marketplace, as they consider it unfair for a chat service that acts as a complement to Facebook, and a peer-to-peer service like Marketplace, in Meta’s view, neither deserving to be classified as gatekeeper.

Gatekeeping in the European Union implies that the technological services of a platform are regulated under a stricter framework, something that often limits the freedom of these platforms to prevent their excessive growth from risking the free market. This is crucial in markets across the continent, but Meta disagrees with the strict European rules and hence is challenging them.

Meta doesn’t know what to do with Facebook

Facebook is proving to be quite problematic for Meta because, over the past few years, it has been rapidly losing valuable activity and growth data, unlike Instagram, which hasn’t been affected. That’s why Meta is attempting to introduce many features that work on Instagram or other social networks in an effort to revitalize its service.

Among all the major apps today, Facebook has the lowest ratio of young users, which is troublesome considering they are among the most active groups on any social network. However, despite its stagnation, it remains a highly profitable app. That’s why, for instance, its logo change is nearly imperceptible—to minimize any confusion for its vast number of users.