Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook (now known as Meta) has launched AI chatbots modeled after a laundry list of celebrities and influencers including Tom Brady, Snoop Dogg, and YouTube star Mr. Beast. Zuckerberg believes that interacting with AI chatbots featuring the personalities of celebrities will popularize AI on Facebook’s platforms.
Variety reports that Meta, the tech giant formerly known as Facebook, has transformed more than a dozen celebrities and influencers into AI-powered chatbots. This new feature was unveiled at the recent Meta Connect 2023 conference.
The list of celebrities includes Snoop Dogg, MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson), Kendall Jenner, Tom Brady, and Charli D’Amelio, among others. These chatbots are designed to embody distinct personalities, opinions, and interests, reflecting the diverse personas of the celebrities they represent. Mark Zuckerberg, while unveiling these AI chatbots, emphasized the company’s vision, stating, “This isn’t just gonna be about answering queries. This is about entertainment and about helping you do things to connect with the people around you.”
Currently, the chatbots interact with users through text, with their avatars not having the capability to vocalize responses. However, Zuckerberg has hinted at the introduction of voice for the AIs, likely to be implemented early next year, further enhancing the user experience.
These celebrity chatbots are an extension of Meta AI, described as “an advanced conversational assistant,” and are available on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. They are also set to be integrated into the Quest 3 headset and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The chatbots can provide real-time information through Meta’s search partnership with Microsoft’s Bing and can generate photorealistic images based on text prompts.
The beta version of the celebrity AIs has been launched in the U.S., with Facebook revealing plans to introduce new characters in the coming weeks, including those played by Bear Grylls, Chloe Kim, and Josh Richards. Beyond entertainment, Facebook envisions the expansion of AI chatbots for businesses and creators, allowing a broader audience to build their own AIs using Meta’s AI studio tool.
In addition to the chatbots, Meta is rolling out new customized, AI-generated stickers and AI image-editing features on its platforms, allowing users to transform text prompts into unique stickers and apply different visual styles based on text descriptions.
Read more at Variety here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.