Mark Zuckerberg says "holograms of digital things" will be commonplace in the near future.
Zuckerberg made the remark during his keynote speech at Meta's Connect event, a two-day virtual conference focused on AI and virtual/mixed/augmented realities.
"In the future, not too far from now, you're going to walk into a room and there are going to be as many holograms of digital things for you to interact with as there are physical objects," he said.
"Think about all the things that are physically there that don't need to be physical things -- all the paper, media, games, art, your workstation, any screen – could all be interactive holograms," he continued.
Zuckerberg said he envisions a near future where get togethers with friends or meetings at the office will also include virtual avatars.
"Pretty soon, we're gonna be at the point where you're going to be there physically with some of your friends and others will be there digitally as avatars, as holograms, and they'll feel just as present as everyone else," he said.
"Or you'll walk into a meeting and you'll sit down at a table and there will be people who are there physically and people who are there digitally as holograms, but also sitting around the table with you are going to be a bunch of AIs who are embodied as holograms, who are helping you get different stuff done, too," Zuckerberg continued.
Zuckerberg said it's just one of the driving forces behind the "metaverse," which has three aspects: mixed reality, bringing digital objects into the physical world; AI, creating different personas to help accomplish different things; and smart glasses, devices we can wear all day long to experience the technology.
During the conference, Zuckerberg also unveiled a brand new mixed reality headset, the Meta Quest 3.
"It allows you to blend the physical and digital worlds together," he said.
The headset starts at $500 and is a redesign of earlier models with a much stronger processor, higher-resolution display, revamped controllers and a 40% slimmer physique, CNN reported. The headset goes on sale next month.