Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, is set to announce partnerships with well-known actors, including Judi Dench, Kristen Bell, John Cena, Awkwafina, and Keegan-Michael Key, to voice its Meta AI chatbot, according to a source familiar with the matter. The new voice feature, which will offer users the option to choose from a selection of celebrity voices, will be revealed during Meta’s annual Connect conference starting this Wednesday. The chatbot will be accessible across Meta’s apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Meta’s move comes as the company races to dominate the generative AI space, competing with the likes of OpenAI and Google’s Alphabet. The celebrity voices will initially launch in the U.S. and other English-speaking markets this week. This marks another step in Meta’s push to make AI a central part of its user experience, alongside its hardware offerings such as Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which include audio capabilities linked to Meta AI.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently teased the feature by posting a video of himself with John Cena, promoting the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. The company’s AI assistant is already capable of engaging in text conversations and generating images, and Meta hopes the addition of celebrity voices will boost user engagement. The announcement follows earlier experiments by Meta with text-based chatbot characters modeled on celebrities like Paris Hilton and Snoop Dogg, although those efforts had limited success.
Meta’s introduction of celebrity voices mirrors a similar initiative by OpenAI, which faced backlash after Scarlett Johansson accused the company of using a voice that resembled hers without consent. Meta’s shift to an AI studio product allows content creators to design chatbot versions of themselves, aiming to further personalize user interactions on its platforms.
