7 stories shaping the week: Meta's metaverse AI, AWS touts hardware recycling

Meta is not done with the metaverse after it unveiled a new AI model designed to control the behaviour of digital agents in virtual experiences.

Meta Motivo is a behavioural foundation model designed to control the movements of a virtual humanoid agent in metaverse experiences, enabling them to perform complex tasks.

Motivo was trained using an algorithm that leverages an unlabeled dataset of motions designed to encourage virtual agents to learn and perform human-like behaviours. Motivo can power a range of agent body control tasks, including motion tracking and pose reaching without any additional training or planning.

Researchers from Meta’s Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team said Motivo “could pave the way for fully embodied agents in the Metaverse, leading to more lifelike NPCs, democratisation of character animation, and new types of immersive experiences”.

AWS announced earlier this week that through its re:Cycle Reverse Logistics hub, the hyperscaler is diverting more than 99% of its decommissioned hardware from landfills.

The project recovers data centre hardware to extend its life cycle so it can be used longer.

The company claimed that more than 99% of all AWS decommissioned racks were diverted away from landfills for further use, either being sold into secondary markets or recycled.

AWS said that its reverse logistics hubs enabled it to source 13% of spare parts from its own reuse inventory — and plans to expand the project further.

“We're challenging the traditional 'take-make-waste' model, taking a holistic approach to extend the life cycle of our resources,” said Manju Murugesan, AWS's circular economy strategy lead.

Harvard University unveiled plans to create a massive dataset developers can use to train AI models.

The new project would collate public domain materials housed at Harvard Law School’s library, with the dataset containing the text of almost one million books.

The project aims to emulate the Caselaw Access Project, an earlier effort from 2015 that scanned US case law texts, forming the basis of most legal AI training datasets.

“AI systems are only as diverse as the data on which they’re trained, and these public domain data sets ought to be part of a healthy diet for future AI training,” said Greg Leppert, executive director of the Institutional Data Initiative (IDI).

Korean telco giant SK Telecom was among the investors that backed Twelve Labs, a San Francisco-based startup developing video understanding technology.

Twelve Labs raised $30 million to fuel its goal of creating AI solutions that unlock insights from troves of video content.

The startup’s AI foundation models, like the recently released Marengo 2.7, sift through vast amounts of video content to extract insights on objects, speech, and sounds.

Using a multi-vector approach, Twelve Lab’s AI model can understand videos containing different information types, returning analysis across a myriad of areas without losing critical information.

SK Telecom was joined by Databricks, Snowflake Ventures, and HubSpot Ventures in backing Twelve Labs.

In addition to the funding round, Yoon Kim, SK Telecom’s former CTO joined Twelve Labs as the startup’s president and chief strategy officer.

Microsoft is set to sell UK-based telecoms software provider Metaswitch to Alianza.

Microsoft only acquired Metaswitch in 2020 but it has signed a definitive agreement to sell the software firm to Alianza.

The deal will see Alianza secure a combined customer base of more than 1,000 communications service providers, including 19 of the top 20 global operators.

Alianza would secure the integration of Metaswitch's voice and communications software services, IP protocol, as well as its engineering talent.

No financials were disclosed, and the deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2025.

Arelion has deployed a new US route spanning Houston, Texas to Jacksonville, Florida.

The network expansion is designed to provide wholesale and enterprise customers with low-latency IP services to support AI applications and East-West traffic flows.

The new route connects traffic flows from East Coast landing stations to its PoPs in Texas and Mexico, which it claims will help drive growth in the data centre and tech markets along the Gulf Coast.

Arelion’s new route, which will go live in Q1 2025, runs from its Houston Point of Presence to Slidell, Los Angeles and Mobile, Alabama, continuing on to Tallahassee, Florida and onward to multiple PoPs in Jacksonville, including subsea cable landing points.

"This route spurs further growth in data centre markets along the Gulf Coast through reliable connectivity that supports data transfer and replication for AI/ML models," said Art Kazmierczak, director for strategic sales and network development at Arelion.

Nokia is augmenting its data centre switching portfolio by extending support for the open source software SONiC.

SONiC allows users to customise network behaviours according to specific business needs. Nokia aims to provide customers with access to the open source-switching software via its data centre hardware platforms.

Customers can still opt for SR Linux network operating systems, providing flexibility for data centre switching.

“This kind of flexibility gives customers permission to pursue one path while preserving their right to go another route should conditions change.” said Vach Kompella,SVP and general manager of Nokia's IP networks business division.

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