A few days ago, Meta announced a number of AI-based features and tools that left everyone surprised. While much of the limelight in this series of announcements was taken by their future metaverse (yes, folks, they’re still going with that) and features like AI stickers (with rather jocular results), Meta also announced a series of very special chatbots.
Meta’s new AI-based chatbots use the image and even the personality of many famous people to create fictional characters that you can chat with as if they were real people. At least, that’s what we’re being sold.
The list of celebrities collaborating with Meta to carry out this eye-catching experience includes popular names such as rapper Snoop Dogg, youtuber MrBeast, soccer player Tom Brady, as well as model and influencer Kendal Jenner, among many others.
The most striking thing about all this is that many of the celebrities with whom Meta collaborates are not exactly going to be paid very little. According to sources close to Meta consulted by The Information, in the case of several major content creators, the payments can amount to millions of dollars each over several years.
An amount that, although to the rest of us mortals may seem a monstrosity (it is), we must take into account that, thanks to this collaboration, Meta takes advantage of the fame of these celebrities to give enormous visibility to these new AI tools and make many people try them out (which will serve to train their AIs or even use information provided by users for advertising targeting).
Obviously, this will not be the last time a tech company uses famous people to give visibility to its AI products, as this move by Meta will almost certainly create precedents in the industry. What’s more, Meta itself has already confirmed that, in the future, more celebrities (such as Bear Grylls) will collaborate with the company to create their own AI chatbots.
