Meta has recently revealed that it is working with artificial intelligence (AI) to create the metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg showcased one of the AIs that can build virtual worlds by describing them. The company is also working on AIs to make voice assistants and universal translators.
During the live stream, Meta showcased a proof of concept AI, Builder Bot. In a prerecorded video, Mark Zuckerberg showcased the Builder Bot AI’s capability to build virtual worlds. He gave it a simple command, “let’s go to the beach,” which the bot created in mere seconds. Meta also claims to be building the world’s fastest AI supercomputer.
Meta AI creating Virtual Worlds
Mark demonstrated one of its several AIs in a prerecorded demo. The Builder Bot video shows that the AI can make virtual worlds and customize them. However, don’t expect it to be a full-fledged product. The demo is only meant to show off the capabilities of AI in the metaverse.
The bot appears to be using voice input to add 3D objects to the virtual world. However, we don’t know if it is pulling from an existing library of 3D models or not. We also don’t know the limits of such an AI. However, the company is aiming for more ambitious interactions.
“You’ll be able to create nuanced worlds to explore and share experiences with others with just your voice.”
Mark Zuckerberg
Some AI projects have done something similar to image generation using just a text description. These projects include OpenAI’s DALL-E, Nvidia’s GauGAN2, VQGAN+CLIP, and Dream by Wombo.
Meta Universal Translator
Meta is also working on an AI to translate every language and provide instant speech-to-speech translation. The company has set a goal to translate all written languages for its AI system. The company plans to achieve this through two initiatives.
“The ability to communicate with anyone in any language — that’s a superpower that people have dreamed of forever, and AI is going to deliver that within our lifetimes.”
Mark Zuckerberg
The first will be the No Language Left Behind initiative. This project will build AI models to learn how to translate languages using fewer training examples. The next step would be to make a universal speech translator that directly translates speech in real-time.
Many applications use English as an intermediary for translation. However, Meta’s AI plans to build a translator without an intermediary. This project is quite beneficial, but we have no timeframe for its development and release.
Meta AI Assistant
Meta also plans to create advanced assistant AI. According to Zuckerberg, their AI research will allow users to have more natural conversations with voice assistants. To achieve this, the company is working on a new project called CAIRaoke, an end-to-end neural model for building on-device assistants.
“With models created with Project CAIRaoke, people will be able to talk naturally with their conversational assistants, so they can refer back to something from earlier in a conversation, change topics altogether, or mention things that rely on understanding complex, nuanced context. They will also be able to interact with them in new ways, such as by using gestures.”
Meta blog
AI assistants have always been a privacy concern as they are always listening. One can only imagine what would happen if Meta started recording our conversations for “research purposes.”
