Captured in an infographic, it highlights Meta’s ongoing milestones and successes across the region while reinforcing its continued investment and commitment to Sub-Saharan Africa.

With a focus on connecting communities, supporting the creator ecosystem, and driving innovation, Meta has strategically directed resources toward initiatives that align with its mission to give people the power to build communities and bring the world closer together.

“As we reflect on the past year,  we are thrilled to announce our key milestones and investments across Sub-Saharan Africa,” says Kezia Anim-Addo, Communications Director, Africa Middle East & Turkey, Meta. “We remain committed to the continent, and our 2023 highlights reinforces some of the impact we’ve been able to create by supporting the growing ecosystems of creators and building communities through technology.”

Some of the key highlights in the 2023 Year in Review include:

Creator Lab Live: 

Launched the Creator Lab Live, a first-of-its-kind educational in-real-life programme for creators in Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa to inspire creativity, spread positivity, build connections and demonstrate care for the creator community.

Instagram Creators x Brand Academy nano course:

Launched the Instagram Creators x Brand Academy nano course in South Africa in partnership with Red and Yellow (Creative School of Business), a short course to educate creators, aspiring creators and brands on best practices.

‘Made by Africa, Loved by the World’:

Announced the rising stars edition of our ‘Made by Africa, Loved by the World’ campaign to amplify the voices and stories of eight emerging young talents across Africa who are building a global presence, and changing the way the continent and its people are viewed on the international stage including rolling out Instagram #AfricaMade Reels challenge.

WhatsApp Channels:

Launched a content series through collaboration with local content creators in SSA to showcase the benefits of WhatsApp Channels for users.

EbaSafeOnline:

Launched a first-of-its-kind youth safety educational comic book titled #EbaSafeOnline, available in 11 of South Africa’s official languages in partnership with Ethnikids, an online bookstore in South Africa.

Youth Safety and Wellbeing: 

Held a Youth Safety and Wellbeing week in South Africa, engaging with more than 300 youths, parents, educators, and policymakers to educate and inform youth and parents about Meta’s safety tools.

My Digital World:

Hosted a Digital Literacy for Peacebuilding forum in Ethiopia to address the role of digital literacy in peacebuilding and announce the expansion of My Digital World – aimed at equipping young people with information and skills to help them thrive in a digitally connected world.

African XR Realities Lab:

Partnered with Electric South to launch the African XR Realities Lab, an incubation program featuring eight Extended Reality (XR) prototypes leveraging diverse, immersive technologies.

Meta Connect 2023:

Launched a digital campaign in collaboration with Nigerian creators to produce captivating content in anticipation of the annual Meta Connect conference.

Zuckerberg emphasized that while the physical world around us is amazing —and it’s the combination of our physical and digital worlds that defines our reality.

Yet too often, we rely on screens to tap into virtual spaces and content—and that can pull us away from the moment and the people we’re physically with.

Imagine replacing your TV with a fully customizable home theater you can take with you anywhere. Or sitting around a table with friends, some of whom are in the same physical room while others are avatars of those who live miles away—and yet still feeling fully present in the same space and experience.

Or a meeting where some of the avatars are embodied AIs that can help you accomplish a variety of tasks. All of that could be possible when our physical and virtual worlds come together seamlessly.

Many of the foundational technologies needed to make that vision a reality are either already here or on the way. Mixed reality lets us bring digital objects into the physical world or create fully immersive experiences to explore. Advances in AI let us create unique characters that we can interact with in different ways. And future AR glasses will eventually bring these technologies together in a stylish form factor.

So, during his keynote at Meta Connect 2023, Zuckerberg shared the company’s progress on all three fronts.

1. Mixed Reality Goes Mainstream with Meta Quest 3

Zuckerberg was all smiles as he bragged about Meta Quest 3ibeing the world’s first mainstream headset built for mixed reality—and the company’s most powerful headset yet.

With double the graphic processing power of Quest 2, Meta Quest 3 is also the world’s first device to feature the new Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 platform we helped develop in collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies.

“And it’s completely standalone: no PC, no console, no battery packs—nothing to break the feeling of presence. It understands your physical space, so you can play with the world around you.

“With mixed reality, the limits of your physical space can expand, and you can be part of a much larger world—like opening a portal to the Upside Down from your living room in Stranger Things VR.

“With Quest 3, you can immerse yourself in an expansive content library with games and experiences to suit every taste and mood. More than 100 new and upgraded titles are coming to Quest 3 this year, and many of them will incorporate mixed reality. Because Quest 3 is backwards-compatible, you get access to a vast library of 500+ VR and MR experiences on day one.

And with Xbox Cloud Gaming coming to Quest in December, you’ll be able to play Halo Infinite, Minecraft Legends, Forza Horizon 5, and hundreds of other high-quality Xbox games—all on a massive 2D screen you can take with you anywhere.”

Starting at $499.99 USD, Quest 3 ships October 10, and pre-orders are open now.

2. Advances in Artificial Intelligence

Zuckerberg also said while it’s been an amazing year for AI, most people today still haven’t  experienced this new technology firsthand—and Meta has an opportunity to change that by building state-of-the-art AI into apps that billions of people already use.

“We’ve talked about the Llama ecosystem of large language models, and today we unveiled our image generation model. Emu (short for Expressive Media Universe) uses your text prompts to generate high-quality, photorealistic images in just seconds. And thanks to Emu and technology from Llama 2, you can create your own custom AI stickers in chat to liven up conversations on the fly”, the CEO communities who joined the streaming.

Meta also introduced restyle and backdrop—two new features coming soon to Instagram that use the technology from Emu to let you transform your photos or even co-create AI-generated images with friends. Isn’t that going to be interesting?

Restyle lets you reimagine your images by applying the visual styles you describe (you might type out “watercolor” or “collage from magazines and newspapers, torn edges,” for example), while backdrop leverages learnings from the Segment Anything Model so you can change your image’s scene or background.

Images created with restyle and backdrop will indicate the use of AI to help reduce the odds of people mistaking them for human-generated content.

“We’re also experimenting with forms of visible and invisible markers to help people distinguish AI-generated content.“

Unlike most others in the industry, we don’t believe there will be one single super-intelligent AI that everyone uses. Rather, we think you’ll want different AIs for different things, like finding information, communicating, being entertained, playing games, helping you get work done, and more. You might even want to create your own AI that’s aligned with your goals, whether you’re a small business, a creator, or anyone really.

“That’s why we’re building AI studio—a new platform for creating AIs that can help you get things done and just have fun. People will be able to interact with these AIs across the whole Meta universe of products. They’ll have profiles on Instagram and Facebook, and you’ll be able to chat with them in WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. Eventually, they’ll be embodied as avatars in the metaverse too.
“We’ve created some AIs of our own using AI studio that we’ll start rolling out in the US in beta today.

Meta AI is a new assistant you can interact with like a person. It uses a custom model based on Llama 2 technology and has access to real-time information through a partnership with Bing search. And Emul is built into Meta AI, so you can generate high-quality photorealistic images for free in seconds.

“We’ve also been creating AIs that have more personality, opinions, and interests, and are a bit more fun to interact with. There’s Victor, a motivational coach who encourages you to hit your goals. The Dungeon Master can take you on an old-school text-based adventure. And our sous chef Max can take the random assortment of ingredients in your pantry and come up with a delicious recipe on the fly.

“Those are just a few of the AIs we’ve trained so far, and there are several more coming over the next few weeks across a range of interests, from gaming and philosophy to sports, fashion, and beyond.

Generative AI, Zuckerberg said, will bring with it new challenges, “so we’re putting in the time and effort to make sure we get this right. That includes training and fine-tuning models to fit our safety and responsibility guidelines, red-teaming with external experts and internal teams to help ensure our models are safer and more inclusive, programming in guardrails around inappropriate conversations, and sharing system cards publicly so people better understand how these models work.

“This next generation of artificial intelligence will enable a wide range of experiences and interactions, which will transform how people, businesses, and creators use all of our products. And we’ll continue innovating to ensure everyone has a chance to participate in the upside. Click here to learn more.

3. Introducing the Ray-Ban | Meta Smart Glasses Collection

Built in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, our next generation of smart glasses are designed so you can stay connected and capture the moment without having to stop and take out your phone—and easily share your experiences with friends, family, or the world.

“We’ve upgraded them from the first generation in basically every way, and for the first time, you’ll be able to livestream directly from your smart glasses to your friends and followers on Facebook and Instagram.

Continuing, Smart glasses will be an important platform in the future not only because they’re a natural way to see digital holograms in the physical world, but also because soon you’ll be able to let your AI see what you see and hear what you hear—which will make your smart glasses more useful over time.

“Starting at $299 USD, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses collection will launch on October 17, and they’re available for pre-order today on meta.com and ray-ban.com.

The new Meta Quest 3 VR headset was unveiled by Mark Zuckerberg, the Founder/CEO of Meta.

Here’s everything announced at the event.

So, after weeks of speculations and leaks, leading up to the Meta Connect 2023, the event commenced on September 27, 2022 with a keynote streaming on Meta Facebook page focusing around the Meta Quest 3 headset.

Meta Quest 3 VR Headset

Meta has just revealed the Quest 3. Zuckerberg calls it “the world’s first mainstream mixed reality headset”.

Obviously, Meta is taking a clear shot at Apple’s Vision Pro headset with the use of Mixed Reality, and showed a few clips of users playing with Lego sets.

Zuckerberg has also revealed that Xbox Cloud Gaming, a service part of Xbox Game Pass, will be coming to the headset as well.

As announced was Roblox for Quest VR which will be available today.

The tech giant is making Quest 3 better suited for business use as well, allowing owners to add Mixed Reality to their companies without issues.

The Meta Quest 3 will ship on October 10, 2023, and can be pre-ordered today for just $499.

Meta AR smart glasses

Meta has just revealed the next version of their Ray Ban collab AR glasses, and they’re shipping with Meta AI at launch.

With the camera, you’re going to be able to live-stream to your friends and followers without any added hardware.

They’re launching on October 17, 2023, and will cost $299.

Meta has expanded their AI capabilities

Zuck also announced the EMU image generation engine, capable of making new images in just “five seconds.”

WhatsApp is getting generative stickers immediately, and Instagram will have AI image editing software sometime in October 2023.

Meta AI is being released into their apps as well, giving Messenger and WhatsApp an AI based ChatBot. To get their information, Meta partnered with Microsoft to access Bing.

To make it stand out from other chatbots, you can summon Meta AI in any chat just by starting your message with its name.

There’s over a dozen more AI bots coming as well, with all of them being helpful in their specific topics. Meta’s AI bot “Victor” is actually modeled after NBA star Dwayne Wade. Iconic rapper Snoop Dogg worked with Meta to bring them their “Dungeon Master.” Who hasn’t wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons with Snoop Dogg?

Israel Adesanya, MrBeast and Charli D’Amelio are among the dozens of other celebs and influencers that Meta has partnered with for their own personality.

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