Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is set to launch its annual Connect conference at its California headquarters on Wednesday. The event is anticipated to showcase the company's inaugural augmented reality glasses and provide updates on its current virtual reality and artificial intelligence offerings.

Among the AI enhancements is a new audio feature that allows users to choose a voice for Meta's ChatGPT-like chatbot, including options that mimic celebrities such as Judi Dench and John Cena, as reported by Reuters on Monday.

The unveiling of augmented reality technology has been a significant goal for Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who has viewed AR as a pivotal element in the company's shift towards developing immersive "metaverse" experiences since 2021.

Despite this vision, Meta has faced numerous technical hurdles with its AR initiatives, leading the head of the Reality Labs division, focused on metaverse development, to admit last year that a market-ready product was "still a few years away—putting it mildly."

The company has invested tens of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and other metaverse technologies, resulting in a projected capital expenditure for 2024 reaching an unprecedented $37 billion to $40 billion.

Reality Labs, Meta's metaverse division, reported a loss of $8.3 billion in the first half of this year, following a $16 billion loss in the previous year.

For the initial rollout of the AR glasses, Meta plans to distribute them internally and to a limited number of developers this year, with production costs for each device reaching tens of thousands of dollars, according to an insider. The company aims to launch its first commercial AR glasses for consumers by 2027, anticipating that technological advancements will reduce production costs by then.

The source requested anonymity due to a lack of authorization to discuss company strategies.

Zuckerberg seemed to validate this direction, elaborating on the augmented reality (AR) initiatives during a live recording of the Acquired podcast in San Francisco, where he mentioned that Meta is “pretty close to being able to show off the first prototype that we have of that.”

Meta has not yet responded to inquiries regarding these plans.

In the interim, the company has experienced an unexpected success with its camera-equipped Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which have gained traction on the path to AR.

Capitalizing on the growing interest in generative AI technology, Meta announced at last year’s Connect conference the addition of an AI-powered digital assistant to the glasses, transforming a previously overlooked product into the leading AI wearable available.

While Meta has not released specific sales figures for the smart glasses, the CEO of EssilorLuxottica, the manufacturer of Ray-Ban, indicated this summer that the new generation sold more in a few months than the previous version did over two years. According to market research firm IDC, over 700,000 pairs of the glasses have been shipped since the update last year.

Recently, Meta has extended its collaboration with EssilorLuxottica and is considering a potential investment in the eyewear company, leading to speculation that the AR glasses may also carry the Ray-Ban brand. In the short term, Meta's plans for the smart glasses include developing a next generation that will incorporate a viewfinder capable of displaying basic text and images through the lenses.

This year, the company has been rolling out software updates to enhance the AI assistant's functionality on the current glasses, including an April update that allowed the assistant to recognize and discuss objects observed by the wearer.