Meta Connect 2023 Developer Recap

On September 27th and 28th, we hosted developers at the Meta campus and virtually to take part in Meta Connect 2023 where we shared exciting advancements in emerging technologies and hosted developer sessions focused on AI and mixed, virtual and augmented realities.

The day kicked off with the announcement of the new Meta Quest 3, a world-class mixed reality (MR) device, which is now available for purchase starting at $499.99 USD. The announcement was followed with exciting advancements in AI and the launch of the next generation of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses that will be available to purchase on October 17. We also shared how we’re working with the developer community to pioneer 100 new and upgraded titles that will be coming to Quest 3 this year, many including mixed reality experiences.

If you missed the keynote, you can watch it here to get caught up on the latest solutions and technologies shared at Connect.

Following the keynote, Meta leadership took the stage to share the latest news on the Meta developer ecosystem, highlighting new and updated tools, programs and features across AI, VR, MR and AR, in the Developer State of the Union.

We showcased several advancements in AI, including community advancements made to Llama. The developer community fine-tuned and released more than 7,000 derivatives and on average, across standard benchmarks, improved performance by nearly 10%. We shared how teams around the world are applying AI technologies to their own work. For example researchers at University of California, Berkeley built Koala, a research chatbot fine tuned on Llama 13B to study the performance of lower parameter models against closed source competitors. Their research suggests that models that are small enough to be run locally can be just as performant as larger models with careful fine-tuning. We’re already seeing excitement among developers too. In fact, there’s an entire subreddit with over 50,000 members dedicated to deploying Llama locally.

We also shared new capabilities for VR and MR at Connect. We showcased how our adaptive mixed reality engine intelligently understands and interacts with objects in your physical space, shared new self-service tools to help developers grow their business, and explained how we’re enabling more natural and intuitive interactions in apps through a number of new features and updates.

For a deeper dive on Meta Quest and immersive reality updates, check out the Meta Quest for Developers recap blog.

Lastly, we shared ways we’re enabling creators and developers to build the augmented layer of the metaverse with Meta Spark. We introduced new tools and capabilities focused on improving realism and accelerating creation and iteration, and we also announced expanded availability and monetization opportunities for developers with AR Ads.

To learn more about AR news from Connect, take a look at our Meta Spark recap blog.

Following the Developer State of the Union, 20+developer-focused sessions took place to take a deeper dive into building on Meta Quest, mixed reality, the journey of the Llama ecosystem, next-gen AI products, and more.

We’ve shared highlights and featured talks for each of the key session tracks: Grow & Engage, Present & Expressive and Social & Connected. You can check out the Connect 2023 developer sessions here.

We can’t wait to see how you use these new technologies, capabilities and tools. Keep an eye out for more updates as we continue to improve these emerging technologies by signing up for the Meta for Developers newsletter.