Meta Connect 2024, the annual developer conference, will take place tonight. According to the agenda on Meta's official website, CEO Mark Zuckerberg will deliver a keynote speech at 10 a.m. local time (1 a.m. Beijing time on September 26), sharing updates on mixed reality (MR), artificial intelligence (AI), and wearable devices.

Zuckerberg stated in a previous speech at the Meta Connect conference that these glasses are the "most advanced in the world," marking the "pinnacle of decades of groundbreaking inventions and one of the toughest challenges ever faced by the tech industry."

Meta claims that the glasses feature a holographic display, capable of overlaying 2D and 3D content onto the real world, and use AI to analyze that content and "actively" provide suggestions on the display for the wearer. Following the announcement, the company’s stock rose by over 2%.

The prototype is currently for internal use only and available for a select group of developers. To reach consumers, Zuckerberg acknowledged that the glasses need to be "smaller," "more stylish," have a clearer display, and be more affordable, adding, "We are already seeing progress in all these areas."

A video showcasing Orion technology received praise from several Silicon Valley luminaries, including Nvidia's founder and CEO Jensen Huang and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.

Meta acquired virtual reality headset maker Oculus in 2014 and has continued to develop fully immersive VR headsets under the Quest brand. Five years ago, the company announced its goal to create AR glasses.

The competition to build AR smart glasses is heating up. Evan Spiegel's Snap is a smaller competitor to Meta, having released its latest version of AR glasses last week. Both Meta and Snap are looking to bypass Apple's operating system, betting that immersive glasses will one day replace smartphones. For years, tech companies have attempted to develop AR wearables, like the now-defunct Google Glass, but they have failed to capture consumer interest.

Zuckerberg emphasized Orion's AI capabilities, stating that the rapid advancement of large language models, including the Llama model, has given rise to "a new category of devices centered around AI." He mentioned that, in addition to embedding Meta AI and gesture tracking features, the Orion glasses will also use a wristband to receive signals from the body (including the brain) via a neural interface.

"Voice is great, but sometimes it’s public, and you don’t want to say what you want to do… I think you need a device that allows you to send signals directly from your brain to the device," Zuckerberg remarked.

Meta has previously invested heavily in researching electromyography (EMG), a technology that uses sensors to convert motor nerve signals transmitted from the wrist to the hand into digital commands to control devices. Recent studies have employed EMG to explore how the brain sends signals to the hands for actions like typing and swiping.

In 2019, Meta acquired the U.S. startup CTRL-labs for about $1 billion, which developed technology enabling brain control of electronic devices.

The company will also announce new product updates on Wednesday, all supported by improvements in generative AI, as major tech firms race to deploy this rapidly evolving technology. These products include the latest version of its large language model, Llama 3.2, which is the company's "first major visual model," capable of understanding charts, graphs, and documents.

Zuckerberg stated regarding the new model, "Llama is currently leading in capability; I believe we have reached a turning point in the industry, and it’s beginning to become somewhat of an industry standard, or akin to the Linux of AI."

He indicated that the Meta AI chatbot utilizing Llama "is expected to become the most used AI assistant," with 500 million monthly active users.

Meta also announced an upgraded version of its Ray-Ban smart glasses, which do not feature an AR display but now allow users to use Meta AI's voice interface to analyze photos or videos in real-time. Other features include setting reminders, like remembering where you parked; dialing phone numbers from documents; scanning QR codes; and translating live conversations into different languages.

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