Hanoi (VNA) – Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg has confirmed that an affordable line of Meta virtual reality (VR) headsets will be produced in Vietnam.
On the sidelines of the Innovate Vietnam 2024 in Hanoi on October 1, Clegg told the press about some of Meta's commitments and plans for the Vietnamese market.
As this is his first visit to Vietnam as Meta President of Global Affairs, Clegg expressed his delight at the dynamic and strong development of Vietnam. He said Meta is very proud to help millions of Vietnamese people connect and engage with each other every day through the use of Meta products, including Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Mmillions of businesses around the world as well as in Vietnam can use Meta's applications to connect with their customers, he said, noting that Vietnam is one of the first countries in the world using Meta's conversational business tools.
Meta also promotes training and coaching for people to use digital tools. Specifically, Meta’s training programmes help more than one million students, teachers and parents with the use of digital tools. It has also trained more than 90,000 small- and medium-sized enterprises to use digital tools and applications to expand their business.
Meta and the Vietnam National University, Hanoi agreed to build a training programme on digital skills to improve artificial intelligence capacity in Vietnam. These training courses will start from January 2025.
Clegg is also proud as Meta has deployed an open-source language model Llama 3.1 which is completely free for users.
He said this is very important because 60% of Vietnam’s population is under 45 years old. Tens of thousands of IT engineers are trained in Vietnam every year, and it has strengths in the field of innovation. Therefore, the Llama 3.1 model will contribute to promoting production for businesses, developers, and programming teams in Vietnam. Meta is very proud to contribute to promoting the participation and contribution of all parties in the new era - the Generative AI era (GenAI).
Clegg also emphasised the three commitments of Meta in Vietnam.
Accordingly, from now until the end of 2024, Meta will deploy the AI assistant (Meta AI) for businesses in Vietnam. This will help improve productivity for businesses that are currently using Messenger. Vietnam is also a pioneer in the use of AI integrated tools with Meta's Messenger.
He also confirmed that Meta's Quest 3S (virtual reality glasses) wearable device will be manufactured in Vietnam.
Clegg said Meta will coordinate with domestic partners to produce Quest 3S in Vietnam. This will create more than 1,000 new jobs, putting Vietnam at the center of the world map of Metaverse products and technologies.
The Meta AI will be deployed in October 2024 and it will be available in Vietnam much earlier than some European countries.
Meta AI is an AI assistant that can interact and talk to people. Meta AI is currently deployed and has 400 million users. It will be integrated into Meta products.
Clegg said that Meta has great confidence in the investment environment in Vietnam. While Vietnam should retain its advantages in attracting investments, the country should also maintain consistency in its legal framework, he said.
New regulations that are drafted should be "easy to understand and implement" and "follow international practices," Clegg explained.
He said Vietnam can become a power in the region because it has all the basic elements to take advantage of AI as a driving force for growth and increasingly use digital tools more effectively. The country has advantages such as a young population, a good educational foundation, and a strong competitive spirit.
Therefore, as Vietnam focuses on improving the digital capacity and skills of its people, it will take advantage of its inherent strengths, helping the Southeast Asian nation occupy a prominent place in the global AI future./.
