Meta is asking real celebrities to contribute synthetic voices for future artificial intelligence projects, according to reports from The New York Times and others. The tech giant is reportedly offering millions of dollars to stars like Awkwafina, Keegan-Michael Key, and Judi Dench in exchange for the rights to use their voices to train AI voice clones. Meta is reportedly looking to close the deals ahead of its Connect 2024 event.
It's worth noting that Scarlett Johansson's name is not on the list of names Meta is looking for. That could be due to the recent furor between the actress and OpenAI over whether one of its synthetic voices was trained to sound like her, a la the movie. His. The company said no, but understandably it would be difficult to get it for Meta.
If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because Meta recently made a big push to get celebrity images to support AI features. Celebrity AI chatbots were text-based only, but they were integrated into Meta’s platforms such as Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Unfortunately for Meta, Snoop Dogg’s Dungeonmaster and Paris Hilton’s Detective didn’t spark much interest, and those chatbots, while still around, no longer carry the likeness of any celebrities.
It’s not clear what Meta intends with the celebrity voices, but it’s likely to result in some sort of AI chatbot that could have the voice and, presumably, a digital version of their personality. However, getting the voices in time for Connect may prove tricky, according to reports. The celebrities and Meta are apparently having trouble agreeing on how long and for what purpose Meta can use the AI voices. While the company obviously wants broad rights, the celebrities and their representatives want to put some restrictions in place beforehand.
Actors and writers have just finished two major strikes in which artificial intelligence was a major component. People in the entertainment industry fear that AI could replace their jobs — or so executives believe. Still, industry unions may be finding ways to secure benefits for their members related to AI. SAG-AFTRA has reportedly reached its own agreement with Meta for the use of actors’ voices, which could involve a universal pay scale like the one applied to virtually all other acting contracts.
The elusive combination of technology and celebrities
However, Meta isn’t the only company thinking about the future of AI and celebrities. Google has also been working on creating AI chatbots based on famous people and fictional characters. In that case, AI celebrities will be a template for users to customize personalities and appearances for their own AI chatbots. Both ideas are represented by companies like Character.ai, an early proponent of personalized chatbots based on famous and fictional people.
All of those companies might be more cautious considering what happened with Amazon Alexa and the voice assistant’s attempt to invest in celebrity voices. After early experiments in 2019 with Samuel L. Jackson (in both family-friendly and uncensored forms) proved successful, Amazon began expanding the program in 2020 with the addition of Melissa McCarthy and Shaquille O’Neal and Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan in 2021. Amazon even built a recording studio in Shaq’s home for him as part of the deal. The advent of generative AI may or may not have affected the success of those voices, but by mid-2023, those celebrity voices were removed from Alexa. Companies understand that people like fun technology, and people like celebrities. They just seem to be having a hard time finding a combination that has similar appeal.
