Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s CTO, appeared onstage to talk about the company’s research progress, giving a peek at technologies that allow the company to do things like identify people, pets, and products in a photo with a high degree of confidence or erase a moving sailboat from a video.

Schroepfer says that Facebook’s AI advances over the years have helped prepare it for these new initiatives, but also that the company’s product focus brings clarity to its research directions. “All this cool tech stuff is neat and all, but there’s always ‘What do people want to do with this?,’” he explains. “That’s where Mark Zuckerberg sketches out a vision.” (https://www.fastcompany.com)

VP of Platform & Marketplace Deb Liu showed off AR Studio on the stage.

Facebook makes available FB Spaces in Beta version, but it is already labelled as a step towards “the most powerful social platform”. Head of Social VR Rachel Franklin introduced Facebook Spaces. 

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18 April 2017 marks the first day of F8 2017, Facebook’s annual event where developers come together to explore the future of technology. More than 4,000 people attended the event at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, and millions watched the keynote via Facebook Live.

Mark Zuckerberg opened the conference with a keynote about how the camera is the first mainstream augmented reality platform. People are already using the cameras on their phones to write text on images, add digital objects and modify existing things with face filters and style transfers. That’s why today we announced the Camera Effects Platform, giving developers the power to build AR tools for the camera and bring people together in new ways.

Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, speaking today at the company’s annual developers conference, expressed condolences for the victim of a recent murder in Cleveland, Ohio, that was shared in a video on the social networking site.

Zuckerberg mentioned Robert Godwin Sr., the 74-year-old victim, by name, expressed condolences to his family and friends, and said, “We have a lot of work … we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening.” The brief remarks came on the heels of an official statement from Facebook, in which the company said it would be reviewing its “reporting flows” in order to allow people better report content that violates Facebook policies.

ZUCKERBERG SAYS FACEBOOK “WILL KEEP DOING ALL WE CAN” TO PREVENT TRAGEDIES FROM HAPPENING

After addressing the topic of the murder, Zuckerberg quickly moved on to discuss the company’s efforts to bring augmented reality to the mainstream.

On Sunday, 37-year-old Steve Stephens approached and shot 74-year-old Godwin on a Cleveland street and uploaded a video of the act sometime after it occurred. Stephens also live-streamed a video in which he claimed to have killed multiple other people as well. So far only the one victim, Godwin, has been confirmed.

As of this morning, Stephens was reported dead by the Pennsylvania State Police, who said that Stephens committed suicide after a brief pursuit. (http://www.theverge.com)

Criticism of Facebook
The graphic video of Godwin’s killing remained accessible to the public on Stephens’ Facebook page for more than two hours on April 16 before it was removed by Facebook, according to a timeline shared by the company. The delay generated renewed criticism of Facebook over its handling of offensive content and, in particular, public posts of video and other content related to violent crimes. “We have a lot of work [to do], and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his April 18 keynote address at F8, Facebook’s annual developers conference. “Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Robert Godwin Sr.”, Zuckerberg added. (wikipedia)

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