Meta

That’s according to the Financial Times, reporting that Meta is looking to further its partnership with EssilorLuxottica, the owner of Ray-Ban and so many other eyewear brands.

The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses released last year now support multimodal AI to identify what wearers are seeing. They also sold more in a few months than the previous pair did in two years, according to EssilorLuxottica’s CEO.

Earlier this month, the country’s data protection authority (ANPD) issued a temporary measure banning Meta from training its AI models on Brazilian personal data over privacy and transparency concerns.

Like it did following similar constraints with the EU, Meta has now decided to suspend its generative AI tools in the region while it works to find a resolution with ANPD, according to Reuters.

The two tech CEOS (and jacket-swapping friends) will have a live-streamed “fireside chat” at the SIGGRAPH conference to discuss AI. Their conversation will take place on July 29th at 6PM ET.

The CEOs of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta have all posted comments over the past hour wishing for Trump’s recovery and criticizing the use of violence.

He’s set to appear on the Acquired Podcast on September 10th at San Francisco’s Chase Center. Tickets haven’t gone on sale yet, but you can sign up for more information here.

As summarized by Ball:

In the interview, we discuss the three “epochs” in Meta’s Metaverse strategy, what it will take for total VR / MR headset sales to cross 100 million annually, his the specs of his dream headset, Meta’s spending on Reality Labs, whether and when developers might get access to the Quest’s raw camera feed, the many inventions required to ship optical AR glasses, the role of AI, and more.

A new WhatsApp beta version for Android lets you send a photo to Meta AI, then ask it questions about it or edit the image using prompts, according to WABetaInfo.

Meta has worked more image-generation features into the app lately, including a beta feature letting Meta AI create an avatar for users based on photos of them.

With one year completed for Instagram’s Twitter-like app, Meta illustrator Jez Burrows is showing off some of the other options that were on the table to represent Threads.

Meta’s AI research team has a new system to create or retexture 3D objects based on a text prompt. It combines text-to-3D and text-to-texture generation models to go beyond AI-generated emoji or still images,

Their paper (pdf) claims 3D Gen’s output is “3× to 60× faster” and preferred by professional artists in comparison to alternatives.

“Every person who I’ve shown it to so far is just like... their reaction is giddy,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg says in an interview. Perhaps at Meta Connect in September?

You can read more about Meta’s AR / VR roadmap in a report from last year by my colleague Alex Heath.

I missed half my little girl’s first roller coaster ride because the recording cut off at the minute mark, so I love this for them.

The only other thing I need is an in-between size of Wayfarer frames — I had to return mine because the 53mm were too loose, but the 50mm squeezed my head and gave me headaches.

Game developer Creator just showed a new trailer for Starship Home, its augmented reality cosmic gardening sim for the Meta Quest 3, during the UploadVR Showcase. The game is up for preorder now at a discounted $17.99, with a “Summer 2024” release date, Meta announced.

Some jitteriness aside, I still think the game is promising in a casual Tamagotchi or Animal Crossing sort of way.

Casey Newton shines a light on the increasingly common social media scam that primarily targets teen boys in his most recent Platformer newsletter:

But when a terrifying scam comes along that has led to at least 20 confirmed deaths in the past two years, a whole stack of investigations can’t seem to get a conversation going. [...] Perhaps the surgeon general, instead of his new ham-fisted campaign against every risk that social media presents, could warn parents about this one.