Meta Adds Celebrity Voices to AI Chatbots

Meta announced some starry updates to its AI chatbots — licensed celebrity voices from A-list Hollywood talent.

The Big Picture: It’s not the first time that Meta turned to famous people to give its chatbots some familiar voices. But after the first experiment failed because the celebrities were voicing characters, the tech giant hopes that simply programming the chatbots to be the celebrities themselves makes the technology stickier for users.

Behind the Scenes: At the Meta Connect event yesterday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg bantered with a chatbot voiced by Awkwafina in front of a live audience.

• Awkwafina joins actors like John Cena, Judi Dench, Kristen Bell, and Keegan-Michael Key, who have struck deals with Meta to voice its new AI assistant that will roll out this week across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
• The actors were paid millions of dollars to record their voices and to license their likenesses.
• WSJ reports that the negotiations acted as a test case for how generative AI deals could be done for talent, bringing up issues of control over their appearance, what the chatbots could say, and who would be liable if chatbot responses went off the rails.

The Future: Hollywood has a very complicated view of AI, with top talent especially not liking it when tech companies seem to pull a fast one to rip off their likeness (literally the thing actors monetize). By making sure deals are done above board, Meta may set the stage for a gold rush in Silicon Valley for celebrity NIL rights.

The Other Side: Don’t think Meta is totally off the hook when it comes to AI — a judge declared that Zuckerberg can be deposed in an ongoing copyright-infringement lawsuit from several authors.