Meta says it wants to build the most powerful artificial intelligence supercomputer in the world. The Facebook owner has already designed and built what it calls the AI Research SuperCluster, or RSC, which it says is among the fastest AI supercomputers in the world. It hopes to top that league by mid-2022, it said, in what would be a major step towards increasing its artificial intelligence capabilities. That is partly focused on the metaverse, which Meta has staked its future on. With that new technology, "AI-driven applications and products will play an important role", it said in its announcement.

Facebook has patented a new technology for an "authentic" robot eye. The idea, granted in December, would let the social media company build a "high performing and realistic" eyeball that would be like an "animatronic device" to track humans' eye movements. Tracking eye movements is used in digital ads to detect what people look at, as well as by its parent company Meta's virtual reality applications. This could make it easier to load virtual items in a VR environment – only generating items that the user is looking at. Meta says that the metaverse does not necessitate being online more but being online in a "more meaningful" way, and will be built by multiple companies.

Disney Research, the R&D wing of everyone's favorite Hollywood House of Mouse, has built a robot with uncanny valley-defying gaze interaction that's so realistic you'll be convinced that you're looking at a real person. Audio-Animatronics are Disney's name for animatronic robots, created by Walt Disney Imagineering, that both move and make sounds in synchronized fashion. This latest update means that Disney's robots could potentially lock eyes with visitors and follow them around with their gaze. Depending on the animatronic model this was incorporated into, that could either create an emotional connection with the guest or, potentially, intimidate the bejesus out of them. "Eye gaze is a significant part of the interactions between people, quite a bit of information is conveyed through movements of the eyes," Matthew Pan, a postdoctoral associate at Disney Research, told Digital Trends.