Meta Explores AI-Assisted Earphones With Cameras (theinformation.com) 23
An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta Platforms is exploring developing AI-powered earphones with cameras, which the company hopes could be used to identify objects and translate foreign languages, according to three current employees. Meta's work on a new AI device comes as several tech companies look to develop AI wearables, and after Meta added an AI assistant to its Ray-Ban smart glasses.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has seen several possible designs for the device but has not been satisfied with them, one of the employees said. It's unclear if the final design will be in-ear earbuds or over-the-ear headphones. Internally, the project goes by the name Camerabuds. The timeline is also unclear. Company leaders had expected a design to be approved in the first quarter, one of the people said. But employees have identified multiple potential problems with the project, including that long hair may cover the cameras on the earbuds. Also, putting a camera and batteries into tiny devices could make the earbuds bulky and risk making them uncomfortably hot. Attaching discreet cameras to a wearable device may also raise privacy concerns, as Google learned with Google Glass.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has seen several possible designs for the device but has not been satisfied with them, one of the employees said. It's unclear if the final design will be in-ear earbuds or over-the-ear headphones. Internally, the project goes by the name Camerabuds. The timeline is also unclear. Company leaders had expected a design to be approved in the first quarter, one of the people said. But employees have identified multiple potential problems with the project, including that long hair may cover the cameras on the earbuds. Also, putting a camera and batteries into tiny devices could make the earbuds bulky and risk making them uncomfortably hot. Attaching discreet cameras to a wearable device may also raise privacy concerns, as Google learned with Google Glass.
Maybe Meta (Score:3)
Maybe Meta needs an AI powered leader to help curb this silliness.
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leave the poor guy alone he is super busy learning taekwonleap and just not got around to watching the original trilogy with Lobot.
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leave the poor guy alone he is super busy learning taekwonleap
Methinks he may need a boot to the head! XD
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one guy gets it ;) i am officially old
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Maybe Meta needs an AI powered leader to help curb this silliness.
I sure wish society would realize that AI could replace CEOs far easier than the workers CEOs want to replace with AI.
It would shitcan this AI talk instantly, which we are all quite tired of. If the only job of AI was to entertain, it can’t even do that.
Huge market (Score:2)
could be used to identify objects and translate foreign languages
I'm sure there's a uuuuuge market for this worthless product. "Hey Meta, what in the fuck is that thing in the distance?" "The sun" "No, the other thing" "A 1957 chevy pickup truck" "Oooooh....weird, I thought it was an airplane".
Maybe it's just because I live in the country, but after 40 years, I have only needed a translator once....but I didn't need a meta earbud because the father's daughter was able to translate for me...
Anyone else regularly run into objects they can't identify or languages t
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Anyone frequently get kidnapped and taken to Canada?
I see you posting hate speech [osler.com] again?
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Luckily for us that law does not apply below the 49th parallel.
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Luckily for us that law does not apply below the 49th parallel.
Luck has little to do with it - Every American who was conscripted and fought and died to protect the concept of America
Re:Huge market (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone else regularly run into objects they can't identify or languages they can't speak?
Objects: You obviously know the thing in the distance is a car or an aeroplane, but you want to know the model, out of curiosity. Or ask what's the name of this building in the city. Or where some clothing was purchased, the name of a painting, the name of an actor/actress, the exact name of some weird gizmo at your friend's house is called so you can buy one, or the name of a song, or the translation of the lyrics. I don't feel I'd need that myself, but I can imagine kids growing up constantly asking their AI to tell them what's this and what's that.
These things can already be done already with a mobile phone, but some might prefer a different form factor.
Languages: obviously useful for travellers, or people that happen to live in very international neighbourhood. My workplace boasts multiculturalism and 30+ nationalities, and people speak plenty of languages at the lunch break. There are also cases where you now could visit the company branch in another country and be able to understand what they say. Right now live transcription of spoken language (e.g. by Teams) is garbage but hopefully this will improve.
Privacy rapists at it again (Score:3)
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AI assisted is euphemism for spying on you.
In a society more than willing to trade their digital soul for a free price tag, let me know what the hell your point is.
No one gives a shit about the fact that you might belong to the 1% that still cares about privacy, because of the other 99% who doesn’t.
In fact, you’re now considered “strange” if you do care about privacy. When everyone is a narcissist, no one is.
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Sadly, this is the technology many have dreamt of since childhood: an AI that listens with me and sees with me, learns what I want to know, and privately tells me things. But companies can't seem to make products without keeping a history of every possible thing they can and selling it to advertisers. And as soon as a company makes a non-free version that doesn't harvest your data, they go out of business because everybody wants the "free" version.
Guy walking down the hall: "Hey buddy, how's it going?"
My
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It's from the metastasis. What else would it be?
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AI assisted is euphemism for spying on you.
It's also hung on the hope that people will, at some point, become so stupid that they require these things just to function. That's the problem with all techbro culture since the iPhone came along and turned so many into slaves to the digital. They're all looking for the next must-have, teens would rather die than give up device, and none of them have the imagination to conjure up something at iteration one that's essential, yet they all approach each new device as if it's the most essential thing that hum
Interesting, but ... (Score:3)
Meta Explores AI-Assisted Earphones With Cameras
I don't really care enough about what the inside of my ears look like to have dedicated cameras in them. :-)
A new usage (Score:2)
Now your earphones can hallucinate for you. So if you listen to The Purple People Eaters and they come to the line "one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater", you get an amazing rush.
Hair, heard of it? (Score:2)
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Couldn't find any pictures of how these look but people have hair and some times the hair covers their ears, and by extension could cover any cameras there. As someone who has worked on the development of normal earbud projects I'm sceptical about how practical or viable this would be.
ZUCK DEV TEAM: Multiple cameras from multiple angles with AI rebuilding the final image at any moment from the given data. Solved.
How do you get the data? (Score:2)
I sure hope they aren't entertaining that any "AI" processing be done in the earbuds themselves. They'd have to just stream data to your phone, which in turn would just stream data to a remote server.
However, even the latest Bluetooth 5 standard only gives you 2 Mbps of bandwidth. Good luck streaming video from embedded cameras over a connection like that. Maybe Wifi earbuds? Are those a thing?
WTF (Score:1)
It takes a special kind of person to even come up with something as depraved as this.