Judi Dench, Keegan-Michael Key and Awkwafina are among the many “actors and influencers” whose voices may become part of Meta’s artificial intelligence products. Bloomberg reports on Friday. The company is apparently working to close the deal quickly so it can develop and showcase the new sound at the Meta Connect conference in September.
Specifically, at least one of the tools will be “a digital assistant product called MetaAI,” according to multiple unnamed sources. New York Times Report. Meta is in talks with all of Hollywood’s top talent agencies to secure sound, era wrote. It may pay “millions of dollars” to actors who sign on. Meta handed out similar gift packages to celebrities represented by the recently discontinued Meta AI chatbot at Connect last year.
The contracts will reportedly be temporary, with actors able to choose whether to re-sign at the end of their contract. These voices can be found in Meta’s social media stable and seemingly everywhere Meta AI exists today. These include Facebook and Instagram, as well as Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, the outlet wrote. Meta had not responded to a request for comment as of press time.
But each of these implementations is so full of novelty that, at least to me, they quickly become outdated. However, there’s no denying that generative AI has proven to be a better choice at imitating real human voices, as demonstrated by OpenAI’s GPT-4o chatbot demo, which sounded eerily similar to Scarlett Johansson (whose response to This is not satisfactory). If the celebrity version of Meta’s AI can do everything the regular version of the AI can do, hearing Awkwafina’s distinctive raspy voice won’t be a cheap trick anymore (although we won’t know if it will work that way until Meta announces the feature sound) ).
I don’t own a pair of Meta Ray-Ban sunglasses, but if it means I can ask AI Dame Judy Dench to tell me something about the bridge I’m looking at (I don’t know), I’d be interested. I like that she’ll pay for the negotiation, and also, when it says that to me about the bridge, I can pretend that the voice is actually supposed to be M, Dench’s James Bond Spymaster, trying to throw me off my trail.
