Meta Platforms revealed work on a new supercomputer designed to scale up and develop the next-generation of AI technology, which it will use to accelerate its vision of the metaverse.

The company stated the AI Research Supercluster (RSC) will be the fastest supercomputer in the world once fully built by mid-2022, and would advance AI beyond current tasks such as translating text between languages and helping to identify harmful content.

Through RSC, Meta Platform’s AI researchers are looking to develop models which can learn from trillions of examples, such as working across hundreds of languages; analysing text, images and videos together; and developing AR tools.

Facebook rebranded as Meta Platforms to expand its presence beyond social media to the metaverse, a concept in which people can use virtual environments accessed through different devices.

Other technology giants have since also made noises around developing the concept, though companies including SoftBank Group and SK Telecom were well ahead of this curve.

Meta Platforms explained achieving its metaverse vision required it to expand its use of AI to develop models using “multimodal signals”, determining whether an action, sound or image is harmful or benign.

“As RSC moves into its next phase, we plan for it to grow bigger and more powerful, as we begin laying the groundwork for the metaverse,” the company stated.