Meta’s FAIR (Fundamental AI Research) team has unveiled recent work in areas ranging from transparency and safety to agents, and architectures for machine learning. The projects include Meta Motivo, a foundation model for controlling the behavior of virtual embodied agents, and Video Seal, an open-source model for video watermarking. All were developed in the unit’s pursuit of advanced machine intelligence, helping “models to learn new information more effectively and scale beyond current limits.” Meta announced it is sharing the new FAIR research, code, models and datasets so the research community can build upon its work. Continue reading Meta Rolls Out Watermarking, Behavioral and Concept Models

With AI powering a range of new world-building apps, 2025 could be the year the metaverse finally makes an impact. Midjourney joins the world-building club with Patchwork, a collaborate canvas for creating “infinite” fictional worlds. Now in research preview, the tool is being developed as a standalone app, though preview access requires a Midjourney Discord account linked to a Google account. Users are able to connect characters and worlds, and “share” their developing world — evolving as a “board” — with up to 100 collaborative partners on Midjourney (though the company recommends fewer participants for a more focused experience). Continue reading Midjourney Touts Collaborative World-Building App Patchwork

World Labs, the AI startup co-founded by Stanford AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, has debuted a “spatial intelligence” system that can generate 3D worlds from a single image. Although the output is not photorealistic, the tech could be a breakthrough for animation companies and video game developers. Deploying what it calls Large World Models (LWMs), World Labs is focused on transforming 2D images into turnkey 3D environments with which users can interact. Observers say that reciprocity is what sets World Labs’ technology apart from offerings by other AI companies that transform 2D to 3D. Continue reading World Labs AI Lets Users Create 3D Worlds from Single Photo

Clip It, the Roblox social media contender in the TikTok space, has crossed the one billion views threshold, according to the company. Roblox reportedly plans to leverage that achievement by launching an ad-supported product for Clip It that merges aspects of its custom-branded Roblox game spaces with programmatic advertising. Clip It offers an endless feed of short-form video, with video ads peppered amidst the content, drawing comparisons to TikTok. Clip It currently serves the same programmatic ads as the Roblox mothership, but that is about to change, thanks to its growing popularity. Continue reading Roblox Plans an Ad Revamp as ‘Clip It’ Passes 1 Billion Views

Meta Platforms revenue was up 19 percent to $40.6 billion in Q3 compared to the same period one year earlier. Profit rose to $15.7 billion — a 35 percent increase from 2023. The company believes that its years of investments in adtech, artificial intelligence and the metaverse are starting to pay off. In Q3, Meta reported $23.2 billion in expenses and capital expenditures of $9.2 billion. And the company isn’t taking its foot off the accelerator, having increased its annual spending forecast by $1 billion to a minimum of $38 billion. Additionally, Meta’s advertising revenue for Q3 was just a tick under its high-end spend projection of $40 billion. Continue reading Meta’s Investments in Adtech, AI, the Metaverse Yield Results

The first big play from Disney following February’s $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games is “ESPN Football Island,” available now as part of the “Fortnite” social gaming platform. The new sports-themed experience is designed to get football in front of younger fans. Games include navigating an obstacle course and “high-intensity box fights,” with the main action centering on “Touchdown Rush,” where players “team up with friends and enter the stadium to navigate rocky terrain, a lava moat, and the other team,” according to ESPN. The experience includes participation from ESPN announcers and will soon feature regular updates highlighting the current season. Continue reading Disney, Epic Launch ‘ESPN Football Island’ Experience Online

Epic Games has launched Fab, an online marketplace for buying, selling, sharing and discovering digital assets. Fab supports different types of creators with content for use across Unreal Engine, Unity 3D and Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN). Developers will be able to access Fab in the Unreal Engine 5 Editor, while “Fortnite” creators can look forward to tapping game-ready assets through Fab in UEFN. Epic says Fab will eventually support all game engines. It’s live now on the Web, though the Fab UEFN integration “is undergoing maintenance” while the Unreal Engine 5 Editor implementation is “coming soon.” Continue reading Epic’s Fab Marketplace Has Open Approach to Digital Assets

Facebook parent Meta announced better-than-expected earnings for Q2 last week, surpassing Wall Street estimates for revenue and profit. The company plans to continue spending heavily on artificial intelligence and virtual reality, despite significant losses in its AR/VR and metaverse businesses. Meta reported a revenue increase of 22 percent from $32 billion for the same quarter last year, representing four straight quarters of growth exceeding 20 percent. The company noted that net income jumped 73 percent to $13.47 billion. Advertising revenue, largely from Facebook and Instagram, was up 22 percent year-over-year. Continue reading Meta Reports Q2 Digital Ad Growth, Will Continue AI Spending

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that the company will test a feature to create AI characters through the AI Studio on Instagram that can engage with fans and respond to messages. “Rolling out an early test in the U.S. of our AI Studio so you might start seeing AIs from your favorite creators and interest-based AIs in the coming weeks on Instagram,” he wrote. “These will primarily show up in messaging for now, and will be clearly labeled as AI.” Zuckerberg noted the beta test will help the company improve AI characters and will be made “available to more people soon.” Meta launched AI Studio last year to help businesses build custom chatbots. Continue reading Meta Testing AI Chatbots for Instagram Created by Its Users

Nokia made what it claims is “the world’s first immersive voice and audio call” using cell phones, made possible by the new 3GPP Immersive Voice and Audio Services (IVAS) codec that lets consumers hear 3D spatial sound in real-time. The codec — which Nokia participated in crafting — is a major leap from today’s standard monophonic smartphone voice call experience and is part of the upcoming 5G Advanced standard. The innovation paves the way towards enhanced immersive spatial communications, extended reality and metaverse applications, says Nokia, explaining that it works across “any connected device,” including smartphones, tablets and PCs. Continue reading Nokia Makes the First-Ever 3D Spatial Audio Cell Phone Call

Netflix announced it is launching a “digital theme park” in early access on the Roblox online gaming platform. Web-based universe “Netflix Nextworld” will feature mini-games, easter eggs, watch parties, user-generated content and more “in 3D interactive spaces” based on characters and content from popular Netflix franchises such as “Stranger Things,” “One Piece,” “Cobra Kai” and the “Rebel Moon” movies. There will also be an activity based on the upcoming animated series, “Jurassic World: Chaos Theory.” Users will be able to collect objects and wearables from the shows and movies to post in their Fan Pods, which can be shared online with friends. Continue reading Netflix Teams with Roblox in Creation of ‘Digital Theme Park’

The Walt Disney Company has selected five companies to be in its annual Accelerator program, three of them AI startups, one in robotics and one developing VR. The program, now in its tenth year, identifies promising new tech companies to benefit from Disney funding and mentorship in exchange for an inside track on talent and acquisitions. The class of 2024 includes AudioShake, which leverages AI to aid in mixing and dubbing audio tracks for mixing or dubbing; ElevenLabs, which has a text-to-speech app for GenAI voicing; and Promethean AI, a digital archives search platform that informs prototype design. Continue reading Latest Disney Accelerator Backs AI, VR, Autonomous Vehicles

Sony Corporation debuted a mixed reality headset “aimed at supporting creators in sophisticated 3D content creation.” The Sony XR HMD includes “an XR head-mounted display with 4K OLED Microdisplays and Sony’s proprietary rendering technology” to enable real-time, high-definition “rendering of textures of 3D objects and facial expressions of human characters,” Sony announced at CES. The electronics giant disclosed plans to “collaborate with developers” of 3D production software, “including in the entertainment and industrial design fields.” At launch, Sony is exclusively partnered with Siemens to develop a collaborative product design solution. Continue reading CES: Sony’s Mixed-Reality Headset Built for Content Creation

Seattle-based tech firm Ixana is at CES 2024 demonstrating its Wi-R communication chip, which “reduces energy consumption by 100x compared to radiative wireless technologies like BLE, Wi-Fi, cellular, Zigbee and Z-Wave, enabling a paradigm shift in wearable technology,” according to the company, which nabbed a CES Innovation Award. The 4Mbps YR22 Wi-R chip offers “continuous charging-free body-worn health monitoring, video streaming for extended reality, and intuitive human-computer interaction,” Ixana says, explaining it works via algorithms that run via distributed computing on battery-powered devices. Continue reading CES: Ixana Transforms Human Body into Networked Receiver

Meta Platforms has reportedly been investing billions of dollars each quarter in developing the metaverse, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described as the future of the company. Although sales of VR headsets and AR glasses dropped nearly 40 percent in the U.S. (according to research firm Circana), Meta continues to tout the intersection between AI and the metaverse. “The progress we made in 2023 means generative AI is making its way into the heart of the world’s most popular apps, mixed reality is now at the core of a mass market headset, and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses will let AI see the world from our perspective for the first time,” explained Andrew Bosworth, CTO and head of Meta’s Reality Labs. Continue reading Meta Platforms Continues Its Pursuit of AI and the Metaverse