• by Danielle Oster , September 26, 2024

Audiences heard from some famous voices at Meta’s annual Meta Connect Conference Thursday.

In arguably the most attention-grabbing announcement of the day, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled an update to the company’s AI assistant, MetaAI, allowing users to speak to the chatbot and hear responses in the voice of a number of celebrities.

Zuckerberg engaged with an audio likeness of actress and rapper Awkwafina, but other celebrity voices included with the feature include. Judi Dench, Kristen Bell and Keegan-Michael Key. Meta didn’t reveal details about its agreements with the celebrities to feature their voices.

The feature wasn’t exactly a surprise, though. Reporting by Bloomberg last month revealed that the company was in talks with celebrities including Awkwafina, Dench, and Key, with the outlet claiming Meta was “offering Hollywood celebrities millions of dollars for the right to record and use their voices for artificial intelligence projects.”

That reporting followed an earlier controversy surrounding rival Chat GPT, which dropped a voice reminiscent of Scarlett Johansson after the actress declined an earlier request to lend her voice to OpenAI’s chatbot.

During Meta’s most recent earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed its Meta AI was on track to achieving the company’s goal of becoming the most-used AI assistant by the end of 2024, while alluding to “an exciting roadmap ahead of things that we want to add” to the offering. The company promoted the AI assistant tool with a campaign launched in June utilizing the “Expand your world” tagline.

Meta also shared information on new features allowing users to upload a photo and ask the AI assistant questions about the image, as well as requesting that Meta AI make specific edits to the photo, or add a background. The company also announced that a Meta AI translation tool is currently in the testing phase, positioning the service for creator content on platforms like Instagram – with initial tests limited to English and Spanish and plans to expand its scope in the future.

The company also shared that it is “testing new Meta AI-generated content in your Facebook and Instagram feeds, so you may see images from Meta AI created just for you (based on your interests or current trends).”