2023-09-27 10:00:00
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to brief investors on his plan to build the immersive Metaverse he has touted as the future of computing, at the company’s first in-person conference since the start of the pandemic.
Announcements at Meta Connect, Meta’s most important event of the year, will indicate how Zuckerberg plans to manage the shift in investor fervor from augmented and virtual reality technologies.
The stakes for this event are high, as investors last year criticized the parent company of Facebook and Instagram for spending heavily on the metaverse, prompting Zuckerberg to lay off tens of thousands of employees to continue to finance his vision.
Developers will be paying attention to what apps they might create for Meta’s latest devices, such as the new Quest virtual reality headset, which is scheduled for release this fall. Investors, for their part, will be looking to see if the bet that has caused the company to lose more than $40 billion since 2021 can pay off.
According to two sources, one of the priorities of the day will be virtual assistants with AI and a distinct personality, which the company intends to integrate into its applications. The Wall Street Journal initially reported plans to announce generative AI chatbots at the Connect conference.
Just before the event, Meta said it was implementing a plan announced early last year to roll out mobile and web versions of its flagship social VR platform Horizon Worlds. She also discreetly added legs to her virtual reality avatars, previously reserved for the upper body, as spotted by the Upload VR blog. (Reporting by Katie Paul and Anna Tong; writing by Miral Fahmy)
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