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Meta just revealed the budget-friendly Quest 3S VR headset at its annual Connect keynote event, but it also made a sad announcement about some of its previous headsets. The company will stop selling both the Quest 2 and the Quest Pro by the end of the year. With Quest 3S on the shelf, were officially winding down sales of Quest 2 and Pro. Well be selling our remaining headsets through the end of the year or until theyre gone, whichever comes first, the company wrote in a blog post that also announced the pending launch of the Quest 3S. The company will be selling Quest 2 and Pro accessories for a bit longer after the stock of headsets runs out. This includes the carrying case, the Touch Pro controllers and bundles like the Quest 2 Active Pack. Meta recently lowered the price of the Quest 2 to $200, and its still a decent headset for beginners. The Quest 3S is better in every way, but it starts at $300, while the standard Quest 3 costs $500. Its the end of an era for the Quest 2. This was a hugely successful headset, as it launched during the dog days of COVID-19. For many, it became a crucial item to survive endless isolation, along with stuff like Zoom and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Its the end of an error (see what I did there?) for the Quest Pro. This headset never caught on, likely because it was originally priced at $1,500 before being quickly lowered to $1,000. It still costs a grand from Meta, but can typically be found for around $900 via Amazon and other retailers. As they say, out with the old and in with the new. The Quest 3S is, essentially, the new Quest 2. It starts at $300, boasts the same CPU as the original Quest 3 and handles full-color passthrough. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-will-stop-selling-the-quest-2-and-quest-pro-by-the-end-of-the-year-173704500.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
Over the last year, Meta has made its AI assistant so ubiquitous in its apps its almost hard to believe that Meta AI is only a year old. But, one year after its launch at the last Connect, the company is infusing Meta AI with a load of new features in the hopes that more people will find its assistant useful. One of the biggest changes is that users will be able to have voice chats with Meta AI. Up till now, the only way to speak with Meta AI was via the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. And like last years Meta AI launch, the company tapped a group of celebrities for the change. Meta AI will be able to take on the voices of Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan Michael Key and Kristen Bell, in addition to a handful of more generic voices. While the company is hoping the celebrities will sell users on Meta AIs new abilities, its worth noting that the company quietly phased out its celebrity chatbot personas that launched at last years Connect. In addition to voice chat support, Meta AI is also getting new image capabilities. Meta AI will be able to respond to requests to change and edit photos from text chats within Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. The company says that users can ask the AI to add or remove objects or to change elements of an image, like swapping a background or clothing item. Meta is testing AI-generated content recommendations in the main feed of Facebook and Instagram.Meta The new abilities arrive alongside the companys latest Llama 3.2 model. The new iteration, which comes barely two months after the Llama 3.1 release, is the first to have vision capabilities and can bridge the gap between vision and language by extracting details from an image, understanding the scene, and then crafting a sentence or two that could be used as an image caption to help tell the story. Llama 3.2 is competitive on image recognition and a range of visual understanding tasks compared with similar offerings from ChatGPT and Claude, Meta says. The social network is testing other, potentially controversial, ways to bring AI into the core features of its main apps. The company will test AI-generated translation features for Reels with automatic dubbing and lip syncing. According to Meta, that will simulate the speakers voice in another language and sync their lips to match. It will arrive first to some creators videos in English and Spanish in the US and Latin America, though the company hasn't shared details on rollout timing. Meta also plans to experiment with AI-generated content directly in the main feeds on Facebook and Instagram. With the test, Meta AI will surface AI-generated images that are meant to be personalized to each users interests and past activity. For example, Meta AI could surface an image imagined for you that features your face.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-ai-can-now-talk-to-you-and-edit-your-photos-172853219.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
Meta has announced a new virtual reality headset, and it's called the Quest 3S. As rumored, this is a lower-cost variant of the Meta Quest 3, which we consider the best VR headset for most people, and the entry-level replacement for the popular but aging Quest 2. Meta is aiming it squarely at VR newbies, those upgrading from an older headset and anyone else who's been holding out for a more affordable option if you're thinking about taking the plunge, here's what to know before you pre-order. To make way for the new headset, Meta has discontinued the Quest 2 and more expensive Quest Pro. The company says both headsets will remain available either through the end of the year or until stock runs out. It plans to sell official accessories for the two "for a bit longer," however. The Quest 3, meanwhile, will now include 512GB of storage at its standard $500, giving it another advantage over its new sibling. Previously, the higher-capacity Quest 3 cost $650, while the base model came with 128GB of space. Meta will now sell that 128GB model for $430, but only while supplies last. If you order a 512GB Quest 3 by April 30, you can get the same Batman: Arkham Shadow bundle included with the Quest 3S. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/how-to-pre-order-the-meta-quest-3s-vr-headset-171958398.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
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