It would seem like Meta is the first to throw in the towel with their announcement of the Meta horizon worlds is going to be retired as of June, This was a platform powered by slop. The Idea of building a universe with AI was a bad idea in general. WIth that you would end up with places such as 6 7 land or some shit like that. Most people do not get the astronomical waste that AI in its current from is , for a child to make some 67 slop video that is 60 seconds long it uses the an insane amount of energy! The Same energy required to boil a tea kettle 240 times or charge your iPhone from 0% to $100% every day for three years or a “personal massager for 50 days straight. That amount of power could power a 144 Lumen Ultrabright Portable LED Work Light/Flashlight from Harbor Freight for 6000 hours! You could play the Nintendo Switch continuously for 1,714 hours.

Worse yet, Meta claims they are going to focus on AI. Facebook, Horizon worlds have a large problem, AI brain rot. people are fleeing from AI chats. because, do you really need a sycophantic chat person never to criticize you if you are doing something stupid.

When you are a multibillion dollar company and you fail copying VRchat, and Instead you decide to pump the AI balloon some more with LLM. Meta is likely seeing the explosive “growth” in AI which is nothing more than the .com bubble of the 90’s. The thing is as far as most AI right now when people are done with making slop or AI gets enough rules where unregulated slop can not be made anymore, People are going to stop using it. Right now AI is available to the elites or bored enough to pay for the LLMs. Once we hit market saturation the millions of AI’s will start dying a dime a dozen. In the Enterprise adoption of generative AI has hit 71%. but, over 80% of companies report zero measurable impact on their bottom line. As of right now we are seeing a utility gap where the cost of using the AI exceeds the costs of its output. Companies in its wild adaption are finding out the hidden costs of hardware, Repair, upkeep and electricity.

Meta Horizon worlds had problems with this exact issue , user generating slop and diluting the product into nothing. So to which end VR ends like the 3dTV with actually a higher user base. They are wasting an entire platform when they should of integrated the biggest advantage they had in user market base. Don’t kill of meta horizon worlds, Instead keep the AI there, Focus on making an AI which can overlay the Quest 3 with AR, They could integrate the headset a a visual learning device, they could use it to get directions In the wilds of the cities while hot spotted to your phone. Say things like Chiltons car service manual, showing you what screws to remove or how to replace your spark plugs. Lego with instructions on how to put together your lego Death Star. the options in AR are limitless.

Sure, you’ll look like a goofy bastard, but you’ll be a goofy bastard who knows exactly where he’s going and how to fix his own car. WIth the use of AI you could have an interactive LLM telling you that you dropped a screw or missed a turn.

Update: Meta has partially reversed there shutdown and left Worlds in a Schrodinger’s state of life.