Brandon Moreno joins Mark Zuckerberg at Meta Connect to test out new translation software coming to smart glasses

Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a well-known fan of UFC and frequent practitioner of Brazilian jiu-jitsu so when it came time to show off some new technology at the annual Connect conference he called on former flyweight champion Brandon Moreno to help him out.

Moreno posted a video of his appearance alongside Zuckerberg on stage on Wednesday where the billionaire MMA enthusiast revealed some new and improved technology coming to Meta’s artificial intelligence powered Ray-Ban smart glasses.

Part of a new update coming soon is real-time AI-powered software where users can speak to each other in different languages and translations will come across in a speaker implanted in the glasses.

As a demonstration, Moreno spoke in Spanish, which was then translated into English for Zuckerberg to ask him about his recovery from a knee injury after he suffered a torn ACL in training.

Zuckerberg then responded in English and that was translated back into Spanish for Moreno.

“What a crazy experience today,” Moreno wrote about his appearance on Instagram. “I had the opportunity to try the new updates from the Ray-Ban Meta [smart glasses] live translation with Mark Zuckerberg at Connect 2024.”

Here’s how Meta described the update coming to the Ray-Ban smart glasses:

Soon, your glasses will be able to translate speech in real time. When you’re talking to someone speaking Spanish, French, or Italian, you’ll hear what they say in English through the glasses’ open-ear speakers. Not only is this great for traveling, it should help break down language barriers and bring people closer together. We plan to add support for more languages in the future to make this feature even more useful.

Meta didn’t reveal how soon the software update would be available to users but Tech Crunch described the live-translation technology as the “holy grail for established hardware firm and startups alike.”

For now, at least, Moreno got a taste of how it works from his conversation with Zuckerberg at the Connect conference.