Meta unveiled 28 new celebrity AI chatbot characters across the company's various messaging platforms, including Snoop Dogg and Kendall Jenner.
The tech giant also announced on Wednesday its consumer-friendly entry into the crowded AI chatbot landscape. The reveal happened during a presentation at Meta Connect 2023, where the company said it would launch its own "Meta AI" chat assistance.
Meta's New Celebrity AI Chatbot Characters
On the other hand, the new celebrity AI chatbot characters will be available on platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Meta's new AI assistant will likely feel familiar to anyone using other chatbots, such as ChatGPT or Claude.
It was designed as a general-purpose chatbot that the tech giant claims will be able to help with planning trips, answering questions, and generating images from text prompts. Additionally, Meta's new AI assistant will integrate real-time results from Microsoft's Bing search engine, giving it access to current information, similar to Bing Chat, ChatGPT's browsing plugin, and Google Bard, as per Ars Technica.
Meta's new AI assistant demonstrated through demos that it was quick to generate high-resolution images from short text descriptions using an "/imagine" prompt, a feature that will be free to use for all users. While the tech giant has not disclosed full details regarding the new AI assistant's training, the company said that it is a custom model partially based on its LLaMA 2 language model, released earlier in July.
The 28 new AI chatbot characters would also include Tom Brady, who portrays the character named "Bru," who is a sports fanatic. Snoop Dogg plays a "dungeon master" who provides users with gaming advice. On the other hand, Jenner plays "Billie," who is known as the "big sis."
The celebrity images are not purely videos and can be manipulated generatively to function as novel animations. However, the characters reportedly do not speak and function more like representative avatars of the text-based AI bot personalities.
Advancement in Artificial Intelligence
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company wanted to create AIs with distinct personalities, opinions, and interests. According to Variety, he noted that the technology would not only be designed to answer queries but also provide entertainment and help connect with people around users.
But for now, the celebrity chatbot characters can only respond in text, with Zuckerberg noting that voice for the AIs will probably come early next year. The new additions supplement others based on Meta AI, which the tech giant calls "an advanced conversational assistant."
Meta's new AI-powered assistant will integrate with Microsoft Bing and feature new image editing capabilities and AI-generated stickers for messaging. Two new Instagram features allow users to transform or co-create images using AI.
These are Restyle and Backdrop, which can overhaul existing images. These new features rely on Emu and Meta's Segment Anything Model technology. Additionally, images created with Restyle and Backdrop will indicate that they were generated using AI technology, said the Search Engine Journal.
