Meta Builds New AI Platform

Social Media giant Meta (formerly Facebook) said that it’s created a new artificial intelligence platform that could help the company develop more-realistic avatars for virtual worlds, reported CNET.

According to the report Meta thinks the key to improving these avatars could be in learning more about the bones, muscles and joints that make up the human body’s musculoskeletal system. Avatars that exist in digital spaces look like cartoons and don’t move as fluidly as humans do in real life.

The company’s AI team developed a platform called MyoSuite that creates realistic musculoskeletal models more efficiently than existing ones. Workers can train these models to mimic complex movements such as twirling a pen or rotating a key, helping researchers simulate what would happen after certain surgeries such as tendon transfers.

“This research could accelerate development of prosthetics, physical rehab, and surgery techniques. It could also help us develop more realistic avatars for the metaverse,” Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement about MyoSuite. 

Meta said it’s opening up the musculoskeletal models built through MyoSuite to researchers. It’s also challenging researchers to help the company improve the models so they can simulate more challenging tasks such as rotating two metal Baoding balls in one hand.

Meta, part of the so-called Big Tech giants who have dominated the modern internet for close to over a decade, has recently faced a number of antitrust and regulatory challenges over its policies regarding privacy and how it deals with competitors. The heightened scrutiny of the digital economy has seen the company fall into the crosshairs of various authorities around the world.