The Future is Now: The Metaverse as a Blend of the Physical and Digital Worlds, as Meta Hasn’t Done It Before

He talked about the new features powered by Meta AI tech, including the ability to suggest a birthday party for the user or bring an artificial intelligence assistant into any chat on Telegram, for example. And he said Meta would use this technology to advance the metaverse.

These aren’t new ideas for Zuckerberg — Meta has been working on blending virtual and physical space for years. His presentation in 2020 was completely different from the one he gave in 2019. Amidst the covid-19 pandemic, he promised that in the next decade, most people would spend time in a fully immersive, 3D version of the internet — particularly Meta’s Horizon Wolds platform. The keynote saw him donning a VR headset to meet his friends in space to play poker as a cartoon avatar. It played up the wonder of meeting up in an unreal world, showing cards and players floating in zero gravity.

“Pretty soon, I think we’re going to be at a point where you’re going to be there physically with some of your friends, and others will be there digitally as avatars or holograms, and they’ll feel just as present as everyone else. You can walk into the meeting and sit at the table. There will be holograms and people who are there physically but also holograms and people who are sitting around the table with you helping you get different things done.

But at Meta Connect 2023, Zuckerberg still hasn’t given up on the metaverse — he’s just shifted how he talks about it. He used to focus on the metaverse as a completely digital new world. He wants the public to believe that the future is a blend of the physical and digital.

It’s not clear, though, how many people would immediately associate chatbots with “the metaverse.” There are places where 3D worlds and AI intersect; Meta has mentioned, for instance, bots becoming characters in these worlds. But a lot of AI usage right now consists of typing prompts into a text box — it’s a distinctly non-embodied interaction. It is where Meta’s enthusiasm seems to lie right now.

Meta can’t abandon the metaverse the way many companies have done. After all, it’s right there in the name. The metaverse has always been slippery. Is it a virtual reality device? Is it computer-generated? Is it a game? The best answer might be that whatever Meta does is the metaverse, by definition — at least for Mark Zuckerberg.

Khari Johnson on the Gadget Lab: Mixed Reality, Smart Glasses, and AI Chatbots: Lauren Goode in the Arms Race

This week on the Gadget Lab, we talk with Khari Johnson, a senior writer with WIRED, about mixed reality hardware, its new voice-controlled smart glasses and how Meta sits in the great Artificial Intelligence arms race.

Read Khari’s story about Meta’s many AI chatbots. Read Lauren’s story about the upcoming Meta Quest 3 headset and chatbot-enabled Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

Khari Johnson can be found on social media. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is on social networking websites. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is aproduction by Boone Ashworth. Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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