Meta’s long-promised photorealistic avatars are set to release in the next few months, which the company is calling ‘holograms’. I went hands-on the annual Connect developer conference to see just how Meta plans to take on Apple.
Meta announced it’s finally rolling out its immersive avatars, and they’re coming first to its Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses, which includes a single see-through display in the right eye.
Previously called ‘Codec Avatars’, Holograms are coming to the newly announced Meta VR Glasses too, but those are slated to arrive sometime in Spring 2027. You can learn more about Meta VR Glasses in our hands-on from Connect .
I got an opportunity to go hands-on with Holograms on both devices, which proved to be entirely different chatting experiences based on just how different the devices are in the first place.
Note : We have stylized Meta’s holograms with a capital ‘H’ to differentiate its avatars from true holograms .
The Hologram creation process… okay. Let’s back up a second. These aren’t holograms by the text book definition, as they aren’t 3D light fields, but rather AI-infused immersive avatars that have more of a 2.5D quality to them. More on that below.
Anyway, the Hologram creation process isn’t the same as creating an Apple Persona, which uses Vision Pro’s built-in depth sensors and RGB camera sensors to scan your face. Instead, you simply use Meta’s iOS or Android mobile app and the phone’s selfie camera as you follow a few on-screen prompts, including improvising an answer to the question “What’s your favorite kind of day?”, reciting a short statement and laughing after it, smiling, and turning your head side to side.
All of that is important since Holograms on Display are driven by voice only , meaning the AI is doing a fair amount of work to make your digital copy act as natural as you’d expect a human to. It’s rolling out first to Display in early access in the coming months, but only in the US for now, and only on WhatsApp video chats.