Author: Xiaojing, Tencent Technology
Editor｜Xu Qingyang
At the Meta Connect conference in 2026, the Metaverse became "invisible" and personal superintelligence became the absolute protagonist.
On September 23, local time in the United States, Meta held its annual Connect Developer Conference in Menlo Park, California. "We believe that the highest mission of superintelligence is to create and invent." CEO Zuckerberg said at the beginning.
Zuckerberg also called Muse the "core" of Meta's future AI vision, and Reality Labs is shifting its focus to building personal super-intelligent terminal devices.
Another highlight is glasses. Meta has divided the different product lines more clearly this time: the $349 Ray-Ban Meta Audio has no camera and focuses on listening to music, calls and voice interaction. It has a battery life of up to 12 hours, and the goal is to make people willing to wear it all day long; the third-generation Ray-Ban Meta starting at $449 retains the camera and has upgraded shooting, noise reduction and battery life. The existing Ray-Ban Display glasses with screens have added navigation and other functions and expanded the sales market.
Meta is also adding frames and co-branded models, and expects to offer more than 100 eyewear options by the end of the year.
The higher-end Meta VR Glasses is another product line: it puts computing and batteries into external devices, reducing the weight of the glasses body to about 100 grams, and is aimed at movie viewing, immersive events and multi-screen office work. Priced at US$1,299.99, it is planned to be available in the spring of 2027.
Muse will be connected to these AI glasses in the future, allowing users to assign tasks through voice and what they see in front of them.
This is a story that all consumer hardware terminal companies in this era want to tell. They have their own powerful intelligence, which can enter mobile phones, computers, and extend to all devices that can be worn everywhere.
For Meta, glasses are a key device that allows Muse to continuously perceive the user's situation and provide help when needed. It also gives it the opportunity to establish its own computing portal. The challenge is whether users are willing to wear them for a long time, trust them to process what they see and private information, and whether Muse can provide enough useful services to make the glasses a device used every day.
01. Personal super intelligence Muse
Only a few weeks after Muse was released, Zuckerberg has already given a very high positioning: in the next few years, Muse will grow into a personal super intelligence, helping billions of people around the world achieve their goals and improve their lives.
At present, Muse has served millions of people and has just landed in the Canadian market. It will enter more countries in the future.
In terms of technical architecture, each Muse has its own private and secure computing environment, which Meta calls a Muse secure virtual machine. The underlying model is Muse Spark, which is specifically designed for personal agent training.
Compared with traditional chatbots, Muse emphasizes continuous task execution. Users can set goals, and Muse proactively provides information and generates customized information flows. It also supports role and personality customization. The default role name is Jolly.
The business model is also different. Meta's idea is not to directly charge users a large amount of token fees, but to make it free within a certain scale of usage, allowing Muse to generate value by helping users save money, make money and complete transactions, and then charge small fees from related transactions.
It is a familiar Internet advertising method, but whether this model can be established depends on whether Muse can truly intervene in users' daily decisions and transactions, and how large the number of active users can be. The cases currently announced by Meta have covered shopping, travel, billing, insurance and other scenarios. For example, Muse has helped users find the same type of broken china, and some people have negotiated with cable TV companies through Muse to reduce their monthly bills by $85.
In his speech, Zuckerberg worked hard to convince the audience that Meta has experienced a period of product entry into a phase of rapid growth, and that Muse is currently in this phase.
At this Connect conference, Muse announced several new key capabilities.
The first is the ability to use the Mac computer. After the user authorizes it, Muse can operate applications on the Mac to complete tasks such as running a small business and processing work. After the user leaves the computer, it can continue to perform previously scheduled tasks. The Muse Mac app launched last week, adding new dictation capabilities.
Mail functionality is also under development. Users can add Muse to the mail thread, or forward the mail to Muse and let it handle it on their behalf.
Connectors are an important foundation for Muse's expansion capabilities. Muse has previously been connected to services such as Spotify, OpenTable, Plaid, and Ticketmaster. This time, it has added retailers such as Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, and Wayfair, travel services such as Expedia, and grocery delivery platforms such as Instacart.
In the work scenario, new connectors include Box, GitHub, Granola and Notion. Meta has also cooperated with Stripe and Shopify. Muse can access the Shopify product catalog and complete online shopping through Link and Shop Pay. PayPal payment support is also gradually increasing.
More importantly, Meta began to open the Muse connector platform. In his speech, Meta Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Alexandr Wang described it as an opportunity that arises in the formation of a new platform. It was also announced that the Meta Super Intelligence Laboratory (MSL) is building a model for personal agents from scratch, focusing on optimizing capabilities such as preference memory, personalized actions, long-term continuity, tool selection, and cross-application operations.
Meta also revealed that it will soon release the most powerful model currently and use it to improve the capabilities of the entire model family.
02. Huge eyewear product line
In this Connect, Meta has almost reorganized its eyewear product line.
Zuckerberg believes that about 2 billion people around the world wear glasses, and a considerable number of them will be upgraded to AI glasses in the future. Compared with mobile phones, glasses can continue to see what the user sees and hear what the user hears, and become Muse's entrance to the real world.
Meta is the first to launch a new audio glasses category. Without a camera, such products can adopt a more traditional eyewear design while further reducing weight and thickness and providing all-day battery life. In this category, Meta launched the thinnest Ray-Ban Meta and added the classic Ray-Ban Clubmaster style.
The third generation of Ray-Ban Meta further narrows the frame and temples, adds adjustable temple ends, upgrades the battery and shooting capabilities, increases the number of microphones to six, and supports Dolby Atmos spatial audio capture.
Meta brand glasses have been expanded from dozens of combinations in June this year to 51 types, starting at $249, and new designs such as Adventurer, Capri, and Nova have been added.
Co-branded products are also on the rise. Meta previously launched a Kylie co-branded model, and this time it announced a collaborative model with Lisa. The product adds Lisa's iconic star elements to the ends of the temples. Each pair of glasses comes with a pendant inspired by its pet and a customized glasses case. Lisa World design and virtual try-on functions will also be provided in the app.
Ray-Ban Display glasses also began to expand sales. These are Meta’s first glasses with a full-color, high-resolution display, and the first to be paired with a Meta neural wristband. After being out of stock for a long time one year after its release, it will be restored and sold through Meta.com, and will also enter the international market.
By the end of this year, Meta expects to offer more than 100 eyewear styles, covering multiple product lines such as audio glasses, display glasses, Ray-Ban and Oakley.
Hearing enhancement is also an important feature of this update. Meta Glasses will provide hearing enhancement capabilities and are planned as FDA-approved over-the-counter hearing aids to compensate for mild to moderate hearing loss. Users can complete a hearing assessment through the app and then adjust the amplification effect. Meta said that about one in six adults in the United States has some degree of hearing loss, but the price, size and other factors of traditional hearing aids have affected some users' willingness to wear them.
The AI experience will also be upgraded. In the coming weeks, users will be able to call Muse directly, and it will retain the full context of the conversation and continue the task in the background, while supporting custom voices, speaking speeds and accents.
03. 100 grams, US$1,299, Meta VR glasses will ship in spring
The most important hardware of Connect this time is Meta VR glasses.
Zuckerberg said that Reality Labs is currently focusing more on Muse and AI glasses, and traditional VR equipment will only launch new products when there is a clear breakthrough. This device is one of those breakthroughs. It takes the form of glasses instead of a traditional head-mounted display, and the face weighs about 100 grams, less than one-fifth of Quest 3. The device adopts a split architecture and is equipped with Meta's most advanced display system.
AI is another core capability of this device. For the first time, Meta integrates AI intelligence directly into the operating system. Users can complete operations through voice, eyes and gestures, and can also transform the flat desktop into a virtual keyboard and trackpad.
The products mainly cover three scenarios: private theaters, multi-monitor computers and game consoles.
In terms of audio and video, it is the first VR device to obtain IMAX Enhanced certification and supports Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. Platforms such as Disney, Peacock, Paramount, and HBO Max will provide new 3D or VR content, while YouTube, Prime Video, Crunchyroll, etc. will provide 2D streaming media.
In terms of sports, Meta plans to provide more than 100 immersive live broadcasts of events each year, and has partnered with ESPN to provide front-row 180-degree views of some games starting with college football this fall.
In terms of games, it initially supports 75 pure gesture games, is also compatible with the Quest game library, and can also access hundreds of Xbox cloud games.
In office scenarios, AI assistants can directly handle tasks such as drawing updates, hardware version merging, material rendering, and calendar management. The device also supports connecting DisplayPort external display sources via USB-C.
Meta also demonstrated functions such as mixed reality agents and holographic calls. Holographic calls will also be extended to Ray-Ban Display glasses in the future.
Meta VR glasses cost $1,299 and are scheduled to ship next spring.
04. One More Thing by Meta
At the end of the conference, Meta announced Muse Charm, a small AI hardware that can be put in your pocket or hung on a keychain. For users who do not wear glasses, Muse Charm provides an independent entrance to call Muse, and can also help Muse sense the environment around the user.
Muse Charm is still in the prototype stage, and Meta is still determining the surface material and internal component layout, and plans to ship it before the holidays this December. Foreign media broke the news that this project was originally planned to be launched in 2027, but Zuckerberg pushed the team to advance the goal to this holiday season. For Meta, Charm is a rather toy-like attempt: turning an intelligent agent that can handle daily tasks into a portable character that can be picked up and spoken at any time.
Its approximately 2-inch OLED touch screen houses Muse, whose image and voice can be customized by users; you can talk directly to it by tapping the fingerprint sensor on the corner of the fuselage. Charm is co-led by former Apple interface design chief Alan Dye and designer Billy Sorrentino. The translucent shell allows the circuitry on the back and sides to be clearly visible; it also comes with 5G and front and rear cameras, allowing Muse to remain responsive when away from Wi‑Fi and capture information in front of the user's eyes.
Judging from the products released by Connect this time, personal super intelligence has become the absolute main line, Muse is responsible for providing AI capabilities, glasses have become the main entrance, VR glasses cover higher-end computing and entertainment needs, and Muse Charm supplements usage scenarios when not wearing glasses. The map has been almost drawn, and we hope that personal superintelligence will not be the second metaverse.