Facebook's hyped new 'AI concept' looks busted as hell

If Mark Zuckerberg is to be believed, the AI-powered future is being born now. Unfortunately for him, it clearly has a long gestation process.

The Facebook (er, Meta) CEO on Wednesday demonstrated what he described as an "AI concept" dubbed Builder Bot. Like some sort of digital castaway shouting commands to his robotic Wilson, a Zuckerberg avatar was shown populating a computer-generated space with voice commands given to a floating representation of the bot in question.

"Let's add some clouds," the legless Zuckerberg intoned as some pixelated clouds filled the would-be sky. "Huh. That's all AI-generated."

In an accompanying blog post, Meta AI, Facebook's AI division, argued that projects like Builder Bot represent "breakthroughs in artificial intelligence" that will power the company's efforts "building for the metaverse."

And maybe that's true, but for some who watched the demo it's going to take a little more convincing.

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To be clear, the Builder Bot demo obviously shows technology in its early stages. Even so, following the company's costly pivot to self-proclaimed "metaverse company," it suggests the type of work we'll see from Facebook down the road.

Perhaps Builder Bot can help the company find a better vision.