Zuckerberg Showcases AI Projects Focused on Fleshing Out Metaverse

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled new plans for the metaverse in a recent live stream. The company is working on several new features, including the ability to generate worlds and items by simply describing them.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed a new AI project with a focus on building the Metaverse. The CEO said on Feb 23 during the “Inside the Lab” event that the “key to unlocking a lot of these advances is AI” with respect to the growth and evolution of the metaverse.

The projects would focus on generating worlds through speech, improving how people can chat with voice assistants, and translating between languages. The idea is to make it easier for users to generate and design a metaverse world.

Zuckerberg also showed a demo of the effort, in which a “Builder Bot” declared commands to create a beach, clouds, and trees, which resulted in their generation. This was impressive in and of itself, but it remains to be seen how far it can go and whether it can offer robust experiences.

The model that would be used for building the smart assistant is called Project CAIRoke and is one of the cornerstones of the effort. Other features that were unveiled during the stream included a video calling device that would integrate with AR and VR. Not too many details were offered about these features, but they do present a clear picture of the direction Meta is taking.

Meta has gone all-in on the metaverse. The company has suffered tremendously from recent incidents, with its market cap dropping by hundreds of billions. Facebook’s user growth slowed down for the first time, and a move by Apple led to the company losing a considerable amount in revenue.

Metaverse battle just getting started

The metaverse appears to be Meta’s path to recovery. However, it is not the only company that is working on metaverse projects. Microsoft is also putting a lot of resources into the field, buying Activision Blizzard with an eye on growing its metaverse offerings.

There are concerns, of course. Offensive language and toxic behavior are the most pressing concerns of companies. A lot of effort will have to go into ensuring that the metaverse can be moderated.

Not everyone is keen on the metaverse and AI systems, however. Some have said that they would not prefer to have an AI layer all the time. But it is still early days for Meta’s goals, so it may yet be subject to change or unforeseen challenges.