Meta just scrapped plans for its high-end mixed reality headset, codenamed La Jolla, which was slated to challenge the Apple Vision Pro in 2027. High MicroOLED display costs made keeping the price under $1,000 unrealistic, alongside sluggish demand across the ultra-premium headset market.
Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify's Daniel Ek just published a joint op-ed warning that Europe's disjointed and risk-averse regulations are crushing open-source AI innovation. Due to regulatory gridlock, Meta won't be able to release its upcoming multimodal Llama models in the EU. Why it matters: The tech leaders argue that without simpler and more consistent rules, Europe risks falling permanently behind America and Asia.
Meta just revealed in a new security report that Russian efforts to sway the US election with generative AI are largely failing. Bad actors are using AI to spin up fake stories and images, but Meta says it only provides incremental productivity gains and is easily caught by tracking bogus account behavior. Why it matters: Fears of an AI-driven election apocalypse might be overblown, as platforms are catching influence networks before they gain real traction.
Meta and Universal Music Group just expanded their global multi-year partnership, bringing licensed tracks to WhatsApp for the first time. Beyond monetization across short-form video, the deal focuses heavily on protecting human creators and teaming up to tackle unauthorized AI-generated music.
Meta is reportedly negotiating multi-million-dollar deals with actors like Judi Dench, Awkwafina, and Keegan-Michael Key to license their voices for its Meta AI assistant. The company aims to wrap up deals ahead of its September Connect event, bringing the voices to Instagram and Ray-Ban smart glasses. Why it matters: Meta is betting that authentic star voices will make hardware like smart glasses feel less like a gadget and more like an engaging companion.
OpenAI just threw its weight behind three U.S. Senate bills, notably supporting the Future of AI Innovation Act to formally authorize the U.S. AI Safety Institute. The company is actively courting lawmakers ahead of upcoming regulatory scrutiny to secure a front-row seat at the policy table.
Meta just shut down its celebrity lookalike AI chatbots after spending millions on likeness rights just last September. Instead of handcrafted personas based on stars like Dwyane Wade and Paris Hilton, the company is pivoting to AI Studio, letting creators build their own bot personas.
Meta just rolled out AI Studio in the US, allowing anyone to build and discover custom AI characters powered by Llama 3.1. Creators can set up AI extensions of themselves to answer common questions and engage with followers. However, Meta later noted it has halted new character creation as it shifts focus to Muse Spark.
Meta just rolled out a major upgrade to Meta AI, adding preview access to its flagship Llama 3.1 405B model alongside a new "Imagine me" stylized selfie feature. Users can now generate custom scenes starring themselves, though the 405B model requires manual switching and has weekly limits.
Meta just dropped its open-source Llama 3.1 family, headlined by a massive 405B model that rivals GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet across key benchmarks. The entire lineup supports a 128K context window, and Meta has updated its license so developers can finally use 405B outputs to distill smaller models.
California lawmakers are advancing a controversial AI safety bill that would force tech giants to test models for catastrophic risks—like bioweapons or grid shutdowns—before public release. Tech heavyweights including Google and Meta strongly oppose the measure, arguing its mandates are technically unfeasible and could stifle innovation. Why it matters: With Republicans threatening to roll back federal AI rules, California is positioning itself as the battleground for tech regulation.
A deep dive by The Markup found that widely cited benchmarks like MMLU and HellaSwag—heavily touted by Google and Meta—are fundamentally broken. Many tests rely on outdated datasets or amateur trivia that fail to test actual reasoning or safety. Why it matters: Bragging rights on leaderboards don't equal real-world reliability, especially in sensitive areas like medicine.
Meta just confirmed it won't launch its upcoming multimodal Llama model—or future multimodal versions—in the EU, blaming an unpredictable regulatory environment under GDPR. European firms won't get access even under an open license, though a larger text-only Llama 3 model will still release there.
Meta just unveiled MobileLLM, a specialized architecture designed to squeeze capable language models under 1 billion parameters onto smartphones. By prioritizing network depth over width and sharing weights across blocks, its tiny 350M version matches the 7B LLaMA-2 on specific API tasks. Meta has open-sourced the pre-training code, setting up a new path for fast on-device assistants.
Meta just introduced 3D Gen, a new AI pipeline that turns text prompts into high-fidelity 3D assets in under a minute. The system creates the base 3D model in roughly 30 seconds and finishes PBR re-texturing in another 20. Why it matters: While still confined to research, slashing 3D generation down to seconds could massively lower production hurdles for game and VR developers.
Meta is cooking up a new feature in WhatsApp that turns your selfies into custom AI stickers. Users upload a few reference photos to Meta AI and can then trigger scenes by typing "@Meta AI imagine me" in any chat—dropping themselves into outer space or a forest. It's currently in beta testing on Android, with full control to delete your reference images at any time.
Meta just changed its 'Made with AI' tag to 'AI info' across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads after photographers complained that real photos retouched in Photoshop were being mislabeled as AI creations. Clicking the new tag now clarifies whether an image was fully generated or simply modified, solving a major headache for creators.
Solos just unveiled the AirGo Vision, taking direct aim at Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The new eyewear features a temple-mounted camera powered by GPT-4o for visual search, with the freedom to swap to Gemini or Claude. It uses a modular design with swappable frames, though it only takes photos and skips video. It launches later this year.
Mark Zuckerberg just called out closed-source AI competitors, claiming tech labs obsessing over 'one true AI' act as if they are trying to 'create God.' Instead of a hoarded single product, he argued the future belongs to diverse, open-source models tailored to different human interests. Why it matters: As tech giants race for total control, Meta is positioning open tools and smart glasses as the antidote to proprietary walled gardens.
Meta is testing creator-made AI chatbots on Instagram in the U.S. Built through AI Studio, these characters primarily appear in messaging to help creators interact with fans, clearly labeled as AI. The test starts with around 50 creators, with plans for a full launch by August.
