Meta Platforms is set to announce new agreements with several well-known actors, including Judi Dench, Kristen Bell, and John Cena, to provide voices for its AI chatbot, Reuters reports.
These celebrity voices will enhance Meta’s digital assistant by offering users five distinctive voices, including Awkwafina and Keegan-Michael Key, alongside several general voice options. The announcement is expected at Meta’s annual Connect conference, starting Wednesday.
The AI chatbot, currently used for text chats and image creation based on user prompts, will soon feature these celebrity voices across Meta’s apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The voices will be available this week in the U.S. and other English-speaking markets. This move is part of Meta’s ongoing competition with Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, in the generative AI field.
Recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared a video on Instagram featuring Cena to promote Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, which were the first to incorporate the AI chatbot last year. At this week’s Connect conference, Meta is also expected to reveal an early version of its augmented-reality glasses and discuss future hardware developments.
Meta has been experimenting with celebrity-themed AI integrations for some time, including past efforts to introduce text-based chatbot characters modeled after stars like Paris Hilton and Snoop Dogg, though those initiatives did not gain significant traction. The platform has now shifted its focus to an AI Studio product that allows creators to build chatbot versions of themselves for use on Meta’s apps.
This development follows earlier reports that Meta had been in discussions with celebrities about lending their voices to AI projects. The competitive push to integrate well-known personalities into AI technologies has already sparked some controversy, with Scarlett Johansson previously accusing OpenAI of using a voice too similar to hers without her consent.
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