Judi Dench and John Cena to voice Meta AI chatbot

Instagram and Facebook owner Meta has announced that it has secured deals with actors including Dame Judi Dench and John Cena to voice its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.

The new audio feature will allow users to choose a voice for Meta’s ChatGPT-like digital assistant from a list of five celebrities. Apart from Dench and Cena, it will also include Kristen Bell, Awkwafina, and Keegan-Michael Key. The five stars will be training the chatbot to replicate their voices.

The update comes as Meta tries to strengthen its AI chatbot, available to users across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, to compete with other assistants, including Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The celebrity voices will be launched in the US and other English-speaking markets this week across Meta’s apps.

This marks another attempt to use celebrity chatbots by Meta. In September 2023, it debuted with AI chatbots with ‘personality’ based on Kendall Jenner and Snoop Dogg, which was discontinued in less than a year.

Other AI advancements

Mark Zuckerberg announced the new feature during his speech at the company’s annual Meta Connect conference. He unveiled other AI advancements during his speech, including a new, less expensive version of Meta’s Quest headsets and updates to the company’s line of augmented reality RayBan glasses.

Furthermore, Meta said it will let social media influencers make AI versions of themselves. Prior to this, there was the feature where influencers could train AI to connect with their followers via chat. Now, followers will be able to have full, quasi-video calls with AI versions of the influencers using the tool.

Other notable features of Meta’s AI technology include auto-translation and dubbing foreign language reels. In addition, Meta’s AR glasses are going to go live.

Zuckerberg previewed ‘Orion,’ a prototype for an advanced pair of glasses that contain the power of an AR headset in a normal-looking pair of glasses.