It’s time once again for Meta’s annual September product launch event, and The Verge is on the ground in Menlo Park to cover the show live.
Meta says that today’s keynote by Mark Zuckerberg will be about how “Meta is building a future for everyone” — something he wrote at length about in a recent essay about AI, smart glasses, and more.
That means we can expect more news from Zuckerberg and his team on those topics; perhaps we’ll hear more about Meta’s recently launched Muse AI agent and new glasses hardware.
Whatever Zuckerberg and Meta have to say about smart glasses will be particularly notable.
The company is dealing with an outpouring of privacy and harassment concerns stemming from the product line’s built-in camera, which has led to them being derided as “pervert glasses.”
Meta has already tried to tackle that reputation with recent privacy fixes and a new marketing campaign, but it could introduce more updates on the Connect stage.
The show is scheduled to begin at 7PM ET / 4PM PT, and you can follow our live updates here.
More smart glasses and possibly a VR headset are expected today.
Meta Connect used to be all about VR, but in recent years, the event has come to be the launchpad for all of the company’s hardware, Metaverse and AI projects.
This year, we’re expecting CEO Mark Zuckerberg to unveil a slew of new products across its smart glasses, headsets and AI portfolios.
In fact, its own website for Connect says that the next two days will showcase “our latest breakthroughs in AI technologies, AI glasses and VR — designed to help you connect, create and do more of what you care about most.”
Zuckerberg is slated to present the keynote speech at 7PM ET (4PM PT) later today, with additional developer talks and sessions scheduled for tomorrow.
Our senior reporter Karissa Bell will be on the ground in Menlo Park, CA, reporting live from the company’s headquarters.
She’ll be joined by myself and Devindra Hardawar in covering the news from the keynote live.
As a reminder, the company already unveiled a new series of Meta Glasses earlier this year, but is expected to show off a pair today that doesn’t have cameras onboard.
It’s also been awhile since we’ve seen a Quest XR/VR headset from Meta, and it’s quite likely that we’ll learn more about a new model today.
And in case you’re getting deja vu, you might be remembering that another company had just launched a new pair of smart glasses last week.
But Zuckerberg and co. most likely will have far more than one product and some weird demos to show off today.
It’ll be a few more hours until Meta kicks off, and our liveblog will begin slightly before that.
