Hollywood stars like Kristen Bell and Keegan-Michael Key will now talk to you on Instagram — or, more accurately, an AI replication of their voice will now talk to you. That’s because Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — is set to announce that a handful of celebrities have agreed to lend their voices to its Meta AI chatbot, according to Reuters on Monday.
Beyond Bell and Key, the chatbot will also offer the voices of Judi Dench, Awkwafina and John Cena; users will also be able to select from a handful of generic voice options with which to interact.
Meta is set to announce the new AI voices at its Connect developer conference later this week. The company did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment. The voices will be available later this week in the U.S. and other English-speaking markets, per Reuters.
It’s unclear how much the stars are getting paid for their voices.
The star-driven Meta AI update come a few months after OpenAI debuted its ChatGPT voice that sounded remarkably similar to Scarlett Johansson, whom the company had been negotiating with before the actress ultimately decided against licensing her voice. OpenAI pulled its “Sky” chatbot soon after it was released, after gobs of users noted it sounded just like the actress.
“We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice — Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice,” OpenAI said in a blog post at the time.
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