Some familiar voices will be coming to Meta‘s AI chatbots on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
At the Meta Connect event Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the voice updates to the company’s suite of AI products, alongside other offerings like AI dubbing and tools to use AI to edit photos.
Zuckerberg said that the voice functionality will begin rolling out this week.
“We want to make this fun, aright? So in addition to the different system voices that we built in that I think are are pretty good, we’ve also worked with some of the most iconic voices out there to bring them to Meta AI,” Zuckerberg said on stage, before beginning a live demo featuring the voice of Awkwafina.
“Are live demos risky?” Zuckerberg asked.
“Live demos can be risky, yes,” the AI system responded in Awkwafina’s voice. “They can be unpredictable, prone to technical issues and potentially embarrassing, however, they can also be engaging.”
Zuckerberg said he would proceed anyway, with Awkwafina’s voice replying “go for it. Just be prepared for anything to happen. Fingers crossed.”
The Meta AI celebrity-voiced chatbots come just a few months after OpenAI found itself in hot water as it announced its own voice product. When OpenAI announced its “voice mode,” one of the voices sounded suspiciously like Scarlett Johansson, who portrayed an emotive AI in the film Her.
The actress subsequently said that she had been approached by OpenAI chief Sam Altman about contributing her voice to the product.
Presumably Meta is using its celebrity voices not only with permission, but also compensation. A source familiar with last year’s Meta chatbots (which featured the likenesses of celebrities, if not their voices) said that the company was offering deals worth millions of dollars to secure the use of their likenesses and voices.