It’s called Builder Bot and it’s an artificial intelligence system that allows you to build parts of the virtual world with your voice simply by describing them. It was presented by CEO Mark Zuckerberg who, a few months after his name change, decided to show what they are planning in his laboratories. The focus was on artificial intelligence. In a pre-recorded demo video, Zuckerberg walked viewers through the process of creating a virtual space with Builder Bot. He told him “let’s go to the beach” and a beach was formed. Basically Zuck together with his collaborators Jérôme Pesenti, Joelle Pineau and Yann LeCun wanted to talk about the role that AI plays in the construction of the metaverse and how AI is driving the progress made so far in this direction. In a particular moment: since the change of name Facebook now Meta has lost 500 billion dollars. And Horizons Worlds, the virtual reality platform first approach to the metaverse, has reached the threshold of 300 thousand subscribers. That is, since it was released, the monthly user base has grown 10 times. Which is a lot but there are still 300 thousand subscribers.
Builder Bot e l’Ai
Scientists said Meta was working on a new class of generative intelligence models that will allow people to describe a world and generate aspects of it. The video does not specify whether Builder Bot draws on a limited library of man-made models. Computer graphics world generation tools based on the descriptions are already there. For example DALL-E from OpenAI or GauGAN2 from Nvidia. However, Builder Bot isn’t the only project to bring AI into the metaverse.
The universal translator
Meta scientists are working to create a single artificial intelligence system capable of translating between all written languages. A kind of universal voice translator with the aim of providing instant voice translation in all languages. The CAIRaoke project presents itself as “a completely end-to-end neural model for creating assistants on the device”. According to Meta, current translators (Google, Microsoft, etc.) get along well with common languages such as English, Mandarin and Spanish. But 20% of the population remains excluded. To overcome this gap they intend to implement new machine learning techniques. For example, one of the areas they are specializing in is learning how to translate speech in real time from one language to another without the need to switch from written language (Universal Speech Translator). As we read in their blog, universal translation software would be a killer application for future wearable devices such as augmented reality glasses and would also break down the boundaries in reality spaces in immersive virtual reality worlds.
The interpretation of interactions in the metaverse.
Meta, Zuckerberg said, is working on an artificial intelligence that can interpret and predict the types of interactions that may occur in the metaverse, working on “machine learning,”. The AI would then receive raw data instead of being trained on a lot of pre-classified data. To do so, Zuckerberg said, he brought together “a global consortium of 13 universities and laboratories” to work on the largest self-centered dataset. The project is called Ego4D.
