Imagine wearing a pair of glasses and a bracelet that tracks your thoughts by sensing electrical impulses from your skin. Instantly, your field of vision overlaps with the digital world. You see holograms (3D digital avatars of real people), you can project your own hologram, you can even answer calls and play games while still being able to see what's going on in the physical space around you.
This is the future Mark Zuckerberg wants At Meta Connect on Wednesday, Meta's CEO unveiled Orion, the company's first, fully functional prototype of holographic glasses.
Meta claims to be “the most advanced couple ever made.”
Mark Zuckerberg wears Orion glasses. Credit: Andrej Sokolow/photo alliance via Getty Images
Zuckerberg has teased the glasses in previous interviews, telling YouTuber Kallaway in July that Orion and its companion neural interface band, left early testers “pissed off”.
At Meta Connect, the glasses were delivered to Zuckerberg on stage in a metal case. Zuckerberg explained that about a decade ago, he began assembling a team to develop a pair of glasses that weighed less than 100 grams, worked wirelessly, had a wide field of view, supported holographic displays, were bright enough to seen in different lighting conditions. and could be seen through.
“This is the physical world with holograms overlaid on it,” Zuckerberg said.
The glasses also had to support neural tracking.
“I think you need a device that allows you to send a signal from your brain to the device,” Zuckerberg said, adding that Orion “isn't just the first full-screen wide-field-of-view holographic glasses.”
“These are the first glasses that are controlled by a wristband that captures thoughts,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg and his team have achieved “most” of the goals they set out to achieve with Orion. But before this prototype hits the shelves, Meta needs to fix it. Employees and selected external testers will have access to Orion starting today as a company works in creating a better screen, making the glasses smaller and minimizing costs.
“We still have some things I want to continue to push before we ship this as a consumer product,” Zuckerberg said, adding that the glasses were best thought of as “a time machine.”
Orion ties into Zuckerberg's broader smart glasses strategy. The Ray-Ban Meta AI smart glasses that Meta released at last year's Connect were a surprise hit. surpassing the two-year sales of the previous generation in just a few months.
Related: She cold emailed Meta judging the Ray-Bans. Now she heads the Apparel Division.
“For a while we were struggling to keep up with demand,” Zuckerberg said Wednesday. “But we're on top of that now.”
Zuckerberg's plan for the Ray-Ban Meta glasses is to keep updating the AI and the look and feel. Over the next few months, the glasses will receive a series of AI updates, including one that makes conversation with Meta AI through the product more natural and conversational (so you don't need to keep saying “Hey Meta”) and another that adds real-time assistance from Meta AI with multimodal video (so you can look at your closet and ask AI what kind of outfit you should wear to a party).
According to Zuckerberg, Meta AI has about 500 million monthly active users and is on track to be the most used AI assistant by the end of this year.
“This is the start of something big,” Zuckerberg enthused.
Related: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Says Mark Zuckerberg's Vision for the Future of AI Is a 'Home Drive Idea'