Meta bets on AI as the future of extended reality—what marketers need to know

At its annual Connect developer conference on Wednesday, Meta leaned into a marketing approach for its extended reality products that appears to be paying off: more generative AI. Meta revealed new integrations of Meta AI in its Ray-Ban smart glasses, including live language translation, memory and multimodal video AI, which can process visual information and respond with voice. The spectacles—which have jumped in sales since first being implemented with AI a year ago—are now so coupled with the technology that in at least one instance during his keynote address, CEO Mark Zuckerberg referred to the product as simply “AI glasses.” Meta’s second generation of Ray-Bans, which launched last September, was the first to come implemented with AI (though only in the U.S.). Since its release, the company has sold over 700,000 pairs, according to market research firm IDC—more than twice as many as the first generation sold in a year and a half. This month, Meta and Ray-Ban manufacturer EssilorLuxottica extended their partnership into the next decade. “Ray-Ban Meta glasses continue to be a bigger hit sooner than we expected—thanks in part to AI,” Zuckerberg said on an earnings call in July. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs At the conference, Meta also teased a new pair of augmented reality-specific glasses called Orion, which are powered by the Meta AI assistant. Orion is still in development, and Zuckerberg gave no timeline for when it might officially launch. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta’s emphasis on AI assistance reflects how the tech giant is focused on making its extended reality (XR) products practical tools for daily life, which could compel brands to take the XR space more seriously, experts told Ad Age. Last month, Meta announced it is shutting down Spark Studio, its hub for developing AR filters, as a way to shift resources from the 2D mobile environment to the “next generation of experiences” such as glasses. Meanwhile, Snap last week rolled out Spectacles, a pair of augmented reality glasses powered by multimodal AI functionality. And Apple is exploring ways to integrate its own AI system, Apple Intelligence, into its Vision Pro headset, according to Bloomberg. XR—which includes augmented, virtual and mixed reality, and has often been considered an on-ramp to the metaverse—is becoming less about escaping into a new world, and more about connecting in new ways to the physical one, said Nicole Greene, VP and analyst for Gartner. “The metaverse was designed to get people to come to it,” Greene said. “With AI, it’s coming at us.” While Meta has yet to announce any formal ways for brands to activate the device, marketers could eventually benefit by engaging with an audience in multiple ways in a single environment. In one example from his keynote, Zuckerberg showed how the Ray-Ban glasses can identify clothes in front of a user and suggest accessories that match with the outfit via voice or text. This feature—an instance of multimodal AI—could feasibly help a fashion brand offer commerce opportunities in a real-world setting, Greene said. The smart glasses do not have digital display functionality, but a brand could provide links directly to a user’s phone. The glasses can also remember what the user sees, such as a parking space number, and retrieve that information at a later time upon request. Creators have also played a large role in the success of the smart glasses, as a result of the device’s ability to record videos and upload them to Meta’s social media apps. Brands that expand their partnerships with these creators may be able to reach more audiences, Greene said, especially as new AI updates to the device only improve what creators can do with it. For example, the glasses can translate conversations between a user and someone speaking a different language in real time. These real-world use cases are helping Meta to ground XR in a way that reduces confusion for consumers, said Rolf Illenberger, founder and CEO of software platform VRdirect. AR emphasized over VR In addition to presenting the current state of its XR business, Meta hinted at future efforts with Orion. The device looks like a bulkier version of the Ray-Ban smart glasses but comes with far more capabilities as a result of offering holographic lenses, in which digital displays can be superimposed onto reality. The AI assistant features are also more extensive, capable of projecting visualizations of information, such as recipes based on food found in a refrigerator. Notably, Meta is billing Orion as “Orion AI glasses,” per the device’s webpage, in much the same way that it has referred to the Ray-Ban product as “AI glasses.” Not much has been revealed about what brands could do with the glasses (at Connect, most of the device’s air-time was spent on a video showing early users’ incredulous reactions). But marketers can get a head start on the device by thinking about how they could integrate experiences into a visual environment, Illenberger said. In this way, Orion could offer the kinds of opportunities for brands that have hitherto been reserved for virtual reality headsets. Meta’s own line of VR headsets, Quest, did not receive as much fanfare at Connect as its glasses products. Meta unveiled Quest 3S, which tech reviewers are saying is basically a cheaper version of the Quest 3, with hardly any new abilities. Meta also announced that it will be shutting down production of Quest Pro, its most immersive headset that was seen as a rival to Apple’s Vision Pro. That Meta emphasized AR over VR is more evidence that the company is shifting its XR strategy to providing convenience in the real world and away from escaping into an alternate world, Gartner’s Greene said. “When you put on that [Quest] headset, you are not integrating with your daily physical life,” Greene said. Meta teased Orion just a week after Snap launched its AI-powered AR glasses, Spectacles. Google and Apple are also each rumored to be developing AR glasses, but neither has promoted such a product in the light of day. Instead, AI has stolen much of the focus for these companies, including Meta. At Connect, Meta announced new voice functionality for its Meta AI assistant, including voices from celebrities such as John Cena and Kristen Bell. This is not the first time Meta has tied its AI to famous people; at last year’s Connect, the company unveiled celebrity personas to humanize its chatbots but later shuttered the feature after users showed little interest.

Meta bets on AI as the future of extended reality—what marketers need to know

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