Meta AI Introduces Celebrity Voices and New Features

These Celebrities Loaned Their Voices to Meta AI's New Speech Feature

Meta AI can now "see" and speak to you thanks to new AI upgrades, the tech giant announced Wednesday. The company's annual AR/VR event, Meta Connect 2024, also introduced the new Meta Quest S3, Meta Ray Bans and Orion AR glasses, and like every other tech event this year, included a hefty dose of AI. The new voice feature gives the AI assistant a voice so that you can ask it questions aloud and it will answer you in kind -- no need to type if you don't want to. Meta added some star power to the feature, which means you can choose to have Meta AI answer you in a variety of celebrity voices, including: Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan Michael Key and Kristen Bell. OpenAI's ChatGPT got a similar feature -- advanced audio mode -- one day before Meta's announcement. Meta AI is also getting new photo recognition and editing abilities, which is the "see" part of the news. Now when you upload a photo to Meta AI, it will be better at recognizing and identifying elements in the photos. Meta also said you can use its AI assistant to help edit photos, including removing background elements, adding new elements and changing the background. You'll be able to use Meta AI's new features on its social platforms: Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger. Meta said that the new voice feature is beginning to roll out this week in the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. If you can't access the features yet, don't panic; the rollout will continue for the next month. Instagram is also getting some AI attention. Meta showed off how it is improving video dubbing and lip syncing for Instagram Reels. Automatic dubbing will be available starting in English and Spanish, and Meta hopes it will help make more Reels accessible for people by meeting them in their preferred language. Meta also said it is starting to test out integrating recommended, AI-generated images into Instagram and Facebook feeds based on each user's interests. Meta currently adds a label to AI-generated content and it looks like imagined content for you will be getting a similar label.

Judi Dench, John Cena and other celebrities to voice Meta AI chatbot

"Meta has transformed from just a social media company into an AI powerhouse," said one expert, as Meta revealed new advances in its smart glasses, Meta AI and other tech. Dame Judi Dench, John Cena and Awkwafina will all voice Meta AI - the artificial intelligence being rolled out by Instagram and Facebook owner Meta. As part of an update to its Llama model, people will now be able to interact with Meta AI - the company's ChatGPT-like chatbot - by speaking and getting responses from the celebrities. Frozen's Kristen Bell and comedian Keegan-Michael Key will also be options. During Meta's annual Connect conference, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg also showed off Orion, a set of smart glasses he described as "the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen". As well as Orion, he showed off the updates to a pair of smart glasses Meta has developed with Ray-Ban, which will now be able to do live translation. While wearing them, Mr Zuckerberg spoke in English to Mexican martial artist Brandon Moreno replying in Spanish - the conversation was translated in real time. Read more: Viral post falsely claims to stop Meta AI using your data - here's how to actually stop it People can also dub their videos in another language so that it looks like they are speaking natively - even going so far as changing the movement of their lips to match. "We are trying to build a future that is more open, more accessible, more natural, and more about human connection," Mr Zuckerberg said. "This is the continuation of the values and ideas that we have brought to the apps and technology that we have built over Meta's first 20 years." An AI update aimed at influencers allows them to craft AI versions of themselves so they can interact with fans. Read more from Sky News: UK and allies issue alert over huge China-backed botnet Cards Against Humanity sues SpaceX for $15m AI taught how to spot buildings and settlements Meta AI now has 500 million users, the company said. Jeremy Goldman, of the research firm Emarketer, called the number "jaw-dropping". "Meta has transformed from just a social media company into an AI powerhouse," he said. "Mr Zuckerberg's move to celebrity voices is not just for fun - it's a direct challenge to OpenAI, with an emphasis on real-world utility. "Meta is aggressively undercutting Apple's Vision Pro to dominate the middle-tier AR/VR market." Those VR goggles, which came out earlier this year after much anticipation, cost $3,500 (£2,600).

Meta's AI can now talk to you in the voices of Awkwafina, John Cena, and Judi Dench

Meta is adding conversational voices by celebrities to its AI chatbot in Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. The company announced at its Connect event today that you can now talk to Meta AI and hear it respond in one of several voices, including celebrity soundalikes such as Awkwafina, John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key, Kristen Bell, and the only one I truly care about: Dame Judi Dench. These celebrity voices will only be available to US users of Meta's apps to start. And if you prefer a voice that is a little more mundane, you can also pick from non-celeb voices with names like "Aspen," "Atlas," or "Clover." Google and OpenAI also now offer similar conversational experiences that ostensibly aren't based on celebrity voices. If your first thought here was "Gee, that sounds a lot like that Scarlett Johansson thing that OpenAI did," you're right -- expect that, rather than debuting an AI voice that just coincidentally sounds like one of the world's highest-paid actors, Meta is explicitly announcing celebrity partnerships, which likely involve payment or some other deal. Meta hasn't shared those details, but the company has paid each celebrity "millions of dollars" for their voices, according to The Wall Street Journal. And in negotiations, some of the people reportedly wanted to limit what their voices could say and to make sure they weren't liable if Meta AI was used. Meanwhile, Meta recently shut down its chatbots that emulate celebrities like Tom Brady on Instagram, while Amazon used celebrity voices like Samuel L. Jackson or Shaq for Alexa before shutting them down last year, too. Meta's AI updates aren't just about voice conversations. Its chatbot will also now "answer questions about your photos" when you upload images. Send a picture of a cake, ask how to make it, and it'll grab you a recipe that hopefully does just that. And if you want something "added, changed, or removed" from an image, Meta says you can describe anything from "changing your outfit to replacing the background with a rainbow," and it'll carry out that request. In the above examples from our hands-on testing, Meta AI changed the color of a T-shirt. It's not clear what, if any, guardrails there are on this experience. With Google AI, we have plenty of examples of what this sort of tech can do, for better or worse, and we'll see sometime in the next year how Apple manages it, too.

Meta debuts AI chatbot voiced by celebrities Judi Dench, Awkwafina and others

Meta's artificial intelligence-powered chatbot spoke to CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a voice familiar to fans of American actress, comedian and rapper Awkwafina in a demo of the enhanced AI tool on Wednesday. That's because Meta AI, the company's virtual assistant, now reads aloud its responses to user queries, and can do so in the voice of a number of celebrities, the technology company announced at its Connect conference. The chatbot, which Meta says has roughly 400 million users, lets you choose the voice you hear. Now those voices include Awkwafina, Kristin Bell, John Cena, Dame Judi Dench and Keegan-Michael Key, the company said. More generic voice options will also be available. "I think that voice is going to be a way more natural way of interacting with AI than text. It is just a lot better," Zuckerberg said in announcing the feature. Meta is adding celebrity voices to "make this fun," he added. In a demo of the tool at the conference, Zuckerberg said to the AI, "Hey, are live demos risky?" In the voice of Awkwafina, the AI responded, "Live demos can be risky, yes. They can be unpredictable, prone to technical issues and potentially embarrassing...." The use of AI chatbots sounding like celebs drew attention earlier this year when ChatGPT developer OpenAI found itself in hot water over its use of a voice Scarlett Johansson said sounded eerily similar to her own. In May, the actress released a statement saying that OpenAI founder Sam Altman had asked her to voice ChatGPT's text-to-speech product, but that she declined, according to a New York Times report. Nine months later, when ChatGPT introduced its voice product, Johansson said she was "shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference," according to the report. The actors whom Meta has partnered with could have been paid millions in exchange for use of their voices, according to a New York Times report on the negotiations. Meta did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch's request for comment on the terms of the deals.

Meta AI gets lip-synced translations and celebrity voices, like Judi Dench and John Cena

Meta's AI assistant, Meta AI, is getting a new voice mode of sorts. At the Meta Connect 2024 developer conference in Menlo Park on Wednesday morning, Meta announced that Meta AI can now respond back to questions out loud across platforms where it's available: Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Facebook. You can choose from several voices, including the AI clones of celebrities that Meta hired for the purpose: Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key, and Kristen Bell. The new Meta AI voice feature isn't like OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT, which is highly expressive and can pick up on emotive tones in a person's voice. Rather, it's akin to Google's recently launched Gemini Live, which transcribes speech before having an AI answer it and reading the answer aloud using a synthetic voice. Meta's betting the high-profile talent will make a difference; according to The Wall Street Journal, it paid millions for the use of the celebrity likenesses. Color us skeptical, but we'll reserve judgment until we get to try it ourselves. In other Meta AI updates, the assistant can now analyze images thanks to an upgrade to the underlying AI models that power the experience. In regions where it's supported, you can, for example, share a picture of a flower you see and ask Meta AI what kind it is. Or you can upload a photo of a dish and request instructions on how to make it. (Bear in mind you'll occasionally get wrong answers.) Meta also says it's piloting a Meta AI translation tool to automatically translate voices in Instagram Reels. The tool dubs a creator's speech and auto-lip-syncs it, simulating the voice in another language and making sure the lip movements match. Meta says that it's starting with "small tests" of Reels translations on Instagram and Facebook, only with some creators' videos from Latin America in the U.S. in English and Spanish for now.

Meta's answer to ChatGPT is AI that sounds like John Cena or Judi Dench

The celebrity voices are part of a bet that users will connect with personalized chatbots that surprise, delight and entertain. Meta is revamping its chatbot with an array of celebrity voices -- part of a bet that the star power of Dame Judi Dench and John Cena will draw users to the companies' artificial intelligence tools for entertainment along with information. Its chatbot, Meta AI, will respond to queries in a menu of famous voices, including Awkwafina, Keegan Michael Key and Kristen Bell, the social media giant announced Wednesday at its annual developers conference. "Let Meta AI explain something you're curious about or listen to a joke to lighten the mood," the company wrote in a blog post Wednesday. The move comes just months after OpenAI stalled plans equip ChatGPT with a voice. Most tech companies, including Google and Microsoft, have backed a single flagship chatbot with a largely fixed identity. But Meta is pursuing a different strategy, offering users a plethora of options to personalize their chatbots to their own specific interests and tastes. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described its tools as a variety of AI chatbots each catered to a specific situation -- a customer service rep for small businesses or a fun travel guide for globe-trotting 20-somethings. "Some of the use cases are utilitarian, like searching for information or role-playing difficult conversations before you have them with another person, and other uses are more creative," Zuckerberg told investors in July during an earnings call. "Part of the beauty of AI is that it's general, so we're still uncovering the wide range of use cases that it's valuable for." Sue Young, a Meta vice president of product management, said the fact that Meta's chatbot is embedded within social media apps enables the company to differentiate itself from its rivals. "We wanted to make sure that we had that diversity -- we didn't go with one default [voice]," Young said. "Given the different markets and different people using our products, [we wanted] to make sure that we had a voice that resonated with them." Young said Meta created "multiyear" deals with the voice actors but declined to say how much they were paid. The rejiggered chatbot will be available on the company's Messenger, Facebook and WhatsApp apps along with Instagram's direct messages, the company said. The addition of celebrity voices builds on Meta's personality-driven approach to AI. Last year, the company launched 28 AI-powered chatbots, played by celebrities and cultural figures such as Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner and Naomi Osaka -- a project that was scrapped after it failed to gain traction. This year, Meta started rolling out AI Studio on Instagram, a product that allows everyday users and creators to make their own chatbots. Other efforts to add voices to chatbots have stalled. In May, OpenAI paused its project to add a voice option to ChatGPT after actress Scarlett Johansson alleged the artificial intelligence start-up copied her voice after she refused to license it to the company. Amazon started using celebrities such as actors Samuel L. Jackson and Melissa McCarthy in its Alexa assistant in 2019 -- only to scrap the project three years later. But Meta is betting that the popularity of Instagram and Facebook will propel its chatbot. The company started adding Meta AI to the top of search boxes on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger this year. Meta said Wednesday that more than 400 million people are using Meta AI every month, with 185 million people using it across its products each week. Zuckerberg has predicted Meta AI will be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of this year but has warned Wall Street that it could take years before the company's investment in AI fully materializes. "It was a bit of a brute force strategy, putting Meta AI inside of their family of apps," Bernstein senior internet analyst Mark Shmulik said in an interview before the event. "It kind of feels like they're using it as a learning opportunity." Meta said Wednesday that it will add an image-generating tool into users' news feeds, Stories and Facebook profile pictures. Meta's AI will also suggest captions for Stories on Facebook and Instagram. The company introduced the latest version of its large language model, known as Llama 3.2 -- including a lightweight, text-only model that is tailored for mobile devices. Meta is experimenting with a new tool that uses AI to automatically translate languages in its short-form video product reels, adjusting speakers' voices and the movement of their lips to match. Meta also unveiled two versions of Meta Quest 3S, its latest mixed-reality headset blending the virtual and physical worlds together. The company's device starts at $299 -- far cheaper than Apple's Vision Pro, which sells for more than $3,000. "From watching your favorite TV shows on a cinema-sized screen to your own personal trainer that you can take with you anywhere you go, plus multitasking capabilities, gaming, and more, there's no better device on the market at this price," the company said about the device in a blog post.

Meta unveils star-studded AI assistants

Meta launched AI chatbots voiced by Hollywood celebrities like John Cena and Judi Dench on Wednesday, betting that its billions of users are eager to embrace artificial intelligence. "I think that voice has the potential to be one of, if not the most frequent ways, that we all interact with AI," said Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company's annual product presentation event. "It is just a lot better," he said. The deployment comes months after OpenAI previewed its own ChatGPT voice feature, which drew controversy for its similarity to actress Scarlett Johansson's voice. Meta has obtained permission from the stars featured in its new voice tool, which will be available on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. However, Meta AI won't be accessible in Europe due to concerns about compliance with EU data protection laws and potential fines. Meta's AI relies on content and data from its platforms' legions of users, a practice that involves numerous obligations and safeguards in Europe. 400 million users Like ChatGPT or Google's Gemini, Meta AI is an AI assistant that answers questions, creates images, writes messages and even provides companionship. This new version builds on the initial release unveiled a year ago. Meta reports that over 400 million people already consult Meta AI at least once a month, and the company aims to make it "the most widely used AI assistant by the end of the year." Critics, however, point out that many users stumble into MetaAI inadvertently, as it has replaced the search function on apps such as WhatsApp. Since ChatGPT's breakthrough, the major tech companies have been rapidly developing AI applications capable of producing high-quality content from simple queries. Competition is fierce, with Google and Microsoft having a head start in productivity features, and Apple entering the market with AI-capable iPhones. However, these models require substantial technical infrastructure, energy, and skilled engineers, significantly impacting company resources. Meta believes its enhanced assistant sounds more natural, can interact verbally, and analyze images. Like other chatbots, it can suggest recipes from food photos or edit images based on simple user requests. Despite concerns about heavy spending on AI and virtual reality, Meta's profits have soared, with its share price up 60 percent since the beginning of the year. The company's success rides on strong advertising results. But the social media giant's heavy spending on AI and virtual reality technology has always been a concern for investors and observers. "When I think about AI, Meta is not necessarily the first brand that comes to mind," Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi told AFP. "And their biggest hurdle is going to be privacy and trust: a lot of consumers will have issues with trusting that the data is not being used for other reasons."

Want to Chat With Judi Dench? Meta AI Adds Celebrity Voices

Meta is giving its AI assistant more of a voice by adding the ability to have spoken conversations. At today's Meta Connect event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the voice features will enable you to have "natural" conversations with the AI, powered by its Llama 3.2 model. "I think voice is going to be a way more natural way of interacting with AI than text," Zuckerberg said. "It has the potential to be one of the most frequent ways we interact with AI." Meta AI -- which lives inside Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook -- already has 500 million monthly users, and is "on track to being the most-used AI assistant by the end of this year," Zuckerberg said. (A company press release says it has 400 million monthly users and 185 million weekly users.) Meta partnered with celebrities to embed their voices into the assistant, including Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan Michael Key, and Kristen Bell. (OpenAI tried to do the same with Scarlett Johansson for its Voice Mode, but she declined.) This is Meta's second attempt at celebrity AI integration. At last year's Connect, it debuted "AI influencers" that used the likenesses of Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, and Kendall Jenner in chats. They didn't actually speak, though, and Meta scrapped the program last month. The new celebrity AIs appear to just be fun voices to chat with, though they also include a version of physical impersonation. During the keynote event, Zuckerberg "talked" with the digital likeness of author Don Allen Stevenson III. However, it appeared to represent himself, not his likeness acting as another character, per the previous approach. AI Video Translation, Auto-Dubbing Translating audio and video is another key focus for Meta AI. The company is testing an audio translation tool for Instagram Reels, which could help creators reach a wider audience, along with a new auto-dubbing and lip-syncing feature that makes creators appear like they are speaking in a different language. "With automatic dubbing and lip syncing, Meta AI will simulate the speaker's voice in another language and sync their lips to match," Meta says. It's currently testing on Instagram and Facebook for creators in Latin America and the US in English and Spanish, with plans to expand to more creators and languages. Expect Meta's AI-Generated Photos in Your Feed Meta AI is getting an expanded set of photo capabilities, for users and itself. The social media company will start showing its own AI-generated content in Facebook and Instagram feeds "based on your interests or current trends." It will surface AI prompts for users to "take that content in a new direction," or create new content in real time. Users can send their own photos to the AI assistant. It can answer questions about them and help with edits if you need something "added, removed or changed in the photo - from changing your outfit to replacing the background with a rainbow," Meta says. For extra personalization, the AI can generate custom backgrounds for Instagram stories, using context clues from the photo you are sharing. (YouTube Shorts also debuted an AI background generator last week.) It can also turn an image of yourself into a superhero and share it on social media, or make it your Facebook profile picture.

Meta Adds Celebrity Voices to AI Chat, Including John Cena, Awkwafina, and Keegan Michael-Key

Some familiar voices will be coming to Meta's AI chatbots on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. At the Meta Connect event Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the voice updates to the company's suite of AI products, alongside other offerings like AI dubbing and tools to use AI to edit photos. Zuckerberg said that the voice functionality will begin rolling out this week. "We want to make this fun, aright? So in addition to the different system voices that we built in that I think are are pretty good, we've also worked with some of the most iconic voices out there to bring them to Meta AI," Zuckerberg said on stage, before beginning a live demo featuring the voice of Awkwafina. "Are live demos risky?" Zuckerberg asked. "Live demos can be risky, yes," the AI system responded in Awkwafina's voice. "They can be unpredictable, prone to technical issues and potentially embarrassing, however, they can also be engaging." Zuckerberg said he would proceed anyway, with Awkwafina's voice replying "go for it. Just be prepared for anything to happen. Fingers crossed." The Meta AI celebrity-voiced chatbots come just a few months after OpenAI found itself in hot water as it announced its own voice product. When OpenAI announced its "voice mode," one of the voices sounded suspiciously like Scarlett Johansson, who portrayed an emotive AI in the film Her. The actress subsequently said that she had been approached by OpenAI chief Sam Altman about contributing her voice to the product. Presumably Meta is using its celebrity voices not only with permission, but also compensation. A source familiar with last year's Meta chatbots (which featured the likenesses of celebrities, if not their voices) said that the company was offering deals worth millions of dollars to secure the use of their likenesses and voices.

Meta AI gets celebrity voices and lip-synced translations

Meta's AI assistant, Meta AI, is getting a new voice mode of sorts. At the Meta Connect 2024 developer conference in Menlo Park on Wednesday morning, Meta announced that Meta AI can now respond back to questions out loud across platforms where it's available: Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Facebook. You can choose from several voices including the AI clones of celebrities that Meta hired for the purpose: Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key, and Kristen Bell. The new Meta AI voice feature isn't like OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT, which is highly expressive and can pick up on emotive tones in a person's voice. Rather, it's akin to Google's recently launched Gemini Live, which transcribes speech before having an AI answer it and reading the answer aloud using a synthetic voice. Meta's betting the high-profile talent will make a difference; according to The Wall Street Journal, it paid millions for the use of the celebrity likenesses. Color us skeptical, but we'll reserve judgement until we get to try it ourselves. In other Meta AI updates, the assistant can now analyze images thanks to an upgrade to the underlying AI models that power the experience. In regions where it's supported, you can, for example, share a picture of a flower you see and ask Meta AI which type it is. Or you can upload a photo of a dish and request instructions on how to make it. (Bear in mind you'll occasionally wrong answers.) Meta also says it's piloting a Meta AI translation tool to automatically translate voices in Instagram Reels. The tool dubs a creator's speech and auto-lip-syncs it, simulating the voice in another language and making sure the lip movements match. Meta says that it's starting with "small tests" of Reels translations on Instagram and Facebook, only with some creators' videos from Latin America in the U.S. in English and Spanish for now.

Meta AI adds a voice mode featuring celebrities like John Cena, Keegan Michael Key and Kristen Bell

Now you can talk to Facebook and Instagram and it will answer back Meta Connect 2024 is up and running and Mark Zuckerberg has just announced some impressive updates to Meta AI, the chatbot you can find inside its popular social media apps like Facebook and Instagram. One of the most impressive features he has just announced is the addition of a voice mode to Meta AI that works across all its social media apps. Right now it seems like every big tech company is adding voice mode to their AI, and Meta AI isn't being left behind. Voice mode means that you can hold a conversation with your smartphone and it will answer back in a human-like manner, using AI to generate the responses. While it's talking you can see a circular image on the screen that looks similar to Siri or ChatGPT's new Advanced Voice Mode. Thanks to the latest Meta AI update you'll be able to talk to your smartphone in Messenger, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram DM. What's more, Meta AI will respond to you in the voice of one of your favorite celebrities! The selection of voices available includes Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan Michael Key, and Kristen Bell. So, you'll be able to keep John Cena in your pocket, if you like. Meta AI is used by 400 million people with 185 million people using it across Meta's social media apps each week, so this move is putting voice mode in the hands of an incredible number of people. Meta AI's voice mode rolls out in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand over the next month.

Dame Judi Dench and John Cena to voice Meta AI chatbot

Instagram owner Meta says Dame Judi Dench and John Cena will be voice options for its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. Users will also be able to get information from AI versions of Awkwafina, Keegan Michael Key or Kristen Bell. The technology giant's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, made the announcements during the company's annual Connect conference. At the event, Mr Zuckerberg also unveiled the first working prototype of Meta's augmented-reality (AR) glasses, called Orion.

Meta's AI chatbot will soon speak in the voices of John Cena and other celebrities

The tech giant has reportedly secured deals with various actors to use their voices in its chatbot. Meta has secured deals with several actors, including Kristen Bell, John Cena and Judi Dench, to use their voices for the Meta AI chatbot, reports. Users will be able to talk to the chatbot while listening to answers in the voice of their favorite celebrities. Other celebrities include Awkwafina and Keegan-Michael Key, a source told Reuters. Besides these five voices, the source also said that there are more generic voice options if users prefer them. All voices will be available this week in the US and other English-speaking regions, though the source didn't give any other specific locations. The news follows a report from last month which claimed Meta was negotiating with actors to secure the rights to use their voices for its AI projects. Now, the deals have reportedly been struck, and the chatbot found when using Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp could feature these famous voices soon. The company had intended to finalize agreements before the Connect conference, where Reuters' source says it will announce the new voice options.

Meta's AI now answers in celebrity voices

You can finally ask a question and get the answer in John Cena's voice. Mark Zuckerberg announced at the Meta Connect 2024 developer conference that Meta's AI assistant, Meta AI, can respond back to questions you ask out loud on Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Facebook. These voice responses, Zuckerberg said, will be "one of if not the most frequent ways we interact with AI." And it'll answer in AI clones of celebrities including John Cena, Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, Keegan-Michael Key, and Kristen Bell. According to The Wall Street Journal, it's been a pretty expensive endeavor, costing Meta millions to use the likenesses of these celebrities. This comes just a few months after Meta axed its Meta AI celebrity avatars, those odd characters "embodied by celebrities" like Kendall Jenner, Snoop Dogg, and Tom Brady.

Meta AI Voice takes on ChatGPT Voice with new assistant -- featuring voices like Judi Dench

Let the iconic Dame and other celeb voices assist you with the latest from Meta AI. Meta is making some serious waves in the AI world with announcements coming out of Meta Connect 2024. The latest news of Meta AI voice-enabled AI assistant has been punctuated by using high-profile actors including Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Kristen Bell, Awkwafina and Keegan-Michael Key. But the underlying tech is something that rivals ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode recent announcement. This marks a giant step forward in the race at Meta to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini Live in the emergent generative AI space. Meta AI's new voice feature, set to roll out this week in the U.S. and other English-speaking markets, will emerge across Meta's suite of apps -- including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. This positions Meta to make a bold move into the world of voice assistants, allowing users to pick from a range of celebrity voices, or stick with more generic ones. The inclusion of Judi Dench is especially interesting, given that her voice is considered iconic, refined and recognizable. This fact could add more weight to this experience broadening the user audience. In providing these voices, Meta taps into a special blend of entertainment and functionality, from the stately tone of Judi Dench to the comedic flair of Keegan-Michael Key, an AI assistant designed to offer users more personalized and engaging ways of interacting rather than the stiff feel of digital assistants. In many ways, this is an attempt to humanize even further -- making it a natural inclusion in daily engagement. Voice technology alone evokes an emotional response that text alone cannot. For example, the potential of getting a response in the familiar voice of an actor one adores adds a layer of novelty, but also convenience, making the AI feel more companion-like. Spurred by Meta, innovation has reached a point where the competition for dominance in the AI assistant space is stronger than ever. By signing formal agreements with the actors, Meta avoids legal issues that might arise while at the same time guaranteeing a genuine and authentic experience. The race to AI dominance goes on, but this bold new move by Meta may just be its breakthrough to square up not just against ChatGPT Voice but Google's Gemini Live as well.

Meta debuts its own version of OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode | Digital Trends

At Meta Connect 2024 on Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage to discuss his company's latest advancements in artificial intelligence. In what he describes as "probably the biggest AI news that we have," Zuckerberg unveiled Natural Voice Interactions, a direct competitor to Google's Gemini Live and OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode. "I think that voice is going to be a way more natural way of interacting with AI than text," Zuckerberg commented. "I think it has the potential to be one of [the], if not the most frequent, ways that we all interact with AI." Zuckerberg also announced that the new feature will begin rolling out to users today across all of Meta's major apps including Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook. "Meta AI differentiates itself in this category by not just offering state-of-the-art AI models, but also unlimited access to those models for free integration easily into our different products and apps," Zuckerberg said. "Meta AI is on track to being the most used AI assistant in the world. We're almost at 500 million monthly actives and we haven't even launched in some of the bigger countries yet." Recommended Videos As with Gemini Live and Advanced Voice Mode, Natural Voice Interactions allows users to forgo text prompts and speak directly with the chatbot. Users can stutter, correct themselves, interrupt the AI, and generally speak as they would with another human and still have the chatbot follow the conversation. The new feature will also allow users to pick the voice of the AI and can choose from a variety of celebrities including John Cena, Dame Judy Dench, Kristen Bell, Keegan Michael Key, and Awkwfina. You may remember that lineup from Meta's previous incursion into natural language chatting, which was shuttered in August because users found the interactions to be "creepy" and "surreal." Zuckerberg provided a live demo of the feature onstage, asking the chatbot a series of softball questions that the AI answered satisfactorily. It's speaking cadence appeared a bit stilted and less conversational than what we've seen from Advanced Voice Mode, but was still far better than the monotone intonations you'd get from a Siri response. However, it wasn't until Zuckerberg referred to the AI as Awkwafina that this reporter discovered that that's who that character voice was supposed to be.