Meta's photorealistic avatars arrive this fall, replacing camera feeds with AI-generated faces

Meta has announced that Hologram, a photorealistic avatar feature, will roll out this fall to Ray-Ban Display smart glasses and Quest headsets. During WhatsApp video calls, the other side will no longer see a camera feed but an AI-generated rendering of the user's face.

According to IT之家, the glasses version runs a real-time diffusion model on Meta's servers, generating a 2D video stream from microphone audio alone — facial expressions are driven by voice, with no camera capture. On Quest, the avatar appears as a life-size 3D figure. Creating one takes a few minutes of face and voice recording in the phone app.

Meta showed a research predecessor, Codec Avatars, seven years ago, but consumer products have stuck with cartoonish avatars until now; this is the shift to realism. Meta itself notes the current version distorts when the head tilts and renders rough eye detail.