Meta's live staged demo fails; the "AI" recording plays before the actor acts
45 comments
·September 18, 2025skhameneh
As much as it'll be "interesting" to see how models behave in real world examples (presumably similarly to how the demos went), I'm not convinced this is a premade recording like what seems to be implied.
I'm imagining this is an incomplete flow within a software prototype that may have jumped steps and lacks sufficient multi-modal capability to correct.
It could also be staged recordings. But, I don't think it really matters. Models are easily capable of working with the setup and flow they have for the demo. It's real world accuracy, latency, convenience, and other factors that will impact actual users the most.
What's the reliability and latency needed for these to be a useful tool?
For example, I can't imagine many people wanting to use the gesture writing tools for most messages. It's cool, I like that it was developed, but I doubt it'll see substantial adoption with what's currently being pitched.
dabbz
Yea the behavior of the AI read to me more like a hard coded demo but still very much "live". I suspect him cutting it off was poorly timed and that timing could have amplified due to WiFi? Who knows. I wasn't there. I didn't build it.
YeahThisIsMe
So the live demo failed?
pera
There is a second part that is equally bad, but with Zuck:
https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1nkbqyk/...
fluoridation
God, that's actually painful to watch. I can't believe I lasted two minutes.
twothreeone
Mark's definitely mastered optimizing for peak cringe factor while at 1.95T valuation.
sebgan
I was going to say that’s two minutes I won’t get back (and I won’t) but, ya know, schadenfreude.
fluoridation
It's kind of like Peep Show, where the writers tried to engineer the most awkward social situations, only without the jokes.
OJFord
Would be good to change the OP link to this - it's the same clip but plus a bit more.
I_am_tiberius
I really missed seeing Zuck sweat.
AdmiralAsshat
The Kotaku article on this had a really nice final zinger[0]:
> Oh, and here’s Jack Mancuso making a Korean-inspired steak sauce in 2023.
> https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cn248pLDoZY/?utm_source=ig_em...
0: https://kotaku.com/meta-ai-mark-zuckerberg-korean-steak-sauc...
sampton
I bet they rehearsed a dozen times and never failed as bad live. Got to give them props for keeping the live demos. Apple has neutered its demos so much it's now basically 2 hr long commercials.
donkyrf
The new Apple presentations are much more information dense, and tailored to the main (online) audience. They’re clearly better.
sampton
More dense but less trust worthy. I don't think they would have pushed apple intelligence the way they did if there was a live demo.
crooked-v
Live Apple demos were always held together with duct tape in the first place. That first "live" iPhone demo had a memorized sequence that Jobs needed to use to keep the whole phone OS from hard crashing.
watersb
Never work with children, animals, and puppets.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeverWorkWithChi...
alangibson
That wasn't prerecorded, but it was rigged. They probably practiced a few times and it confused the AI. Still it's no excuse. They've dropped Apollo-program level money on this and it's still dumb as a rock.
I'm endless amazed that Meta has a ~2T market cap, yet they can't build products.
privatelypublic
Well, it _IS_ a rock after all.
johnnyanmac
At this point, honesty is an oasis that is the 2025 year of scams and grifts. I'm just waiting for all the bubbles to pop.
ryandrake
I love how they randomly blame the WiFi network, like anyone is going to buy it.
twothreeone
Somebody said the cooking guy was some influencer person? I noticed that many non-tech people often resort to this excuse, even in situations where it makes absolutely no sense (e.g., on a desktop with only ethernet, or with mic/speakers connected via cable). It's almost like they just substitute "bad wifi" for "glitch".
jerlam
It's almost certainly a joke. Everyone knows that the demo failed.
tannhaeuser
Pretty sure it's a meme, like blaming the WLAN cable.
Reason077
Bad idea to rely on WiFi for an important demo in a crowded environment. It would have worked fine in testing but when the crowd arrives and they all start streaming etc, they bring hundreds more devices all competing for bandwidth.
Zuck should have known better and used Ethernet for this one!
null
Raed667
probably a reference to Steve Jobs or an attempted joke ?
reader9274
Should've downloaded more ram for the wifi to work better
MattDaEskimo
More than likely the full response was kept as context despite being interrupted.
Notably though, the AI was clearly not utilizing its visual feed to work alongside him as implied
jjbinx007
This is like a Black Mirror episode. Also, is it a conscious decision to make the TTS sound so robotic?
blinding-streak
Maybe it's modeled on Zuck's robotic voice
nba456_
still better than the pre-taped apple events. happy to see these products in action
Credit where it’s due: doing live demos is hard. Yesterday didn’t feel staged—it looked like the classic “last-minute tweak, unexpected break.” Most builders have been there. I certainly have (I once spent 6 hours at a hackathon and broke the Flask server keying in a last minute change on the steps of the stage before going on).