Facebook-owner Meta is working on artificial intelligence research to generate worlds through speech, improve how people chat to voice assistants and translate between languages, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday, as he sketched out key steps to building the metaverse.
Zuckerberg is betting that the metaverse, a futuristic idea of virtual environments where users can work, socialize and play, will be the successor to the mobile internet.
“The key to unlocking a lot of these advances is AI,” he said, speaking at the company’s live-streamed “Inside the Lab” event.
Zuckerberg said Meta was working on a new class of generative AI models that will allow people to describe a world and generate aspects of it. He showcased an AI concept called Builder Bot — which allows users to describe what they want the AI to generate. He showed a demo where he, as a legless avatar on an island, commanded AI through speech to create a beach and then add clouds, trees and even a picnic blanket.
“As we advance this technology further, you’ll be able to create nuanced worlds to explore and share experiences with others, with just your voice,” said Zuckerberg.
He also said Meta was working on AI research to allow people to have more natural conversations with voice assistants, a step towards how people will communicate with AI in the metaverse. He said the company’s Project CAIRaoke was “a fully end-to-end neural model for building on-device assistants.”
