Celebrity endorsements can do a lot for a product, but Meta is making several celebrity voices the literal ones of its Meta AI assistant. John Cena, Kristen Bell, Awkwafina, Keegan-Michael Key, and Judi Dench may not be your real friends, but you'll be able to chat with their synthetic voice clones as much as you want soon, according to a report from Reuters. Meta is expected to announce those celebrities and, potentially, more to be who you hear when conversing with the AI chatbot.
If celebrity voices for an AI chatbot seem like a gimmick, well, that's because it is. But, as generative AI assistants continue to sprout in an already crowded field, gimmicks might help Meta attract interest as it jockeys for position against OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.
The agreement with the celebrities will see them all as options for the AI's voice, joining the more generic options. The reported mix is interesting because all are at or near the heights of fame, all have roles children would recognize, and all have made plenty of appearances in more adult films and shows.
It's unclear if the famous voices will require payment, though the celebrities are reportedly getting hefty paychecks for the project. Those checks ensure Meta won't face the rancor OpenAI did over accusations that one of ChatGPT's synthetic voices sounded like Scarlett Johansson in the movie Her.
That's no small matter, as actors and writers went on strike last year in no small part because of concerns about AI replacing them. SAG-AFTRA is rumored to have a deal with Meta for using actors' voices, but there's been no announcement of whether it might be connected to this celebrity voice plan.
Famous or Folly?
Even if the celebrity voices make Meta AI a hit, the company won't be able to rest on its laurels for long. Google has plans for setting up AI chatbots of famous people and fictional characters on YouTube. Even Meta's plan to offer you the chance to make a custom AI chatbot based on yourself is something Google, Character.ai, and others are pursuing.
Meta's eagerness to bring celebrities into its AI projects makes sense, but the company has had some problems on the front not long ago. Meta's Celebrity AI chatbots used celebrity likenesses for the text-based Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp feature when it came out earlier this year. If you look now, though, the chatbots remain, but without any celebrity branding.
Famous voices also tempted Amazon, who gave Alexa the voices of first Samuel L. Jackson, followed by Melissa McCarthy, Shaquille O’Neal, and Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan. A few years after the first test, Amazon removed the voices from Alexa.
Still, Meta is expected to showcase a lot of AI news at the Connect conference this year so this may be only the cherry on top of the other news, boosted by the likely enthusiastic endorsement of the celebrities we'll all be hearing speak to us soon.
