Actors are locked in a long-running battle with Hollywood over what role AI will play in the future of entertainment and how they will be compensated if those AIs fundamentally resemble actors. We are in the middle of a huge battle. With Meta, some of these issues seem to have been resolved…
Today, the company that is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp (and many other products that we hope will one day be as successful as these) announced a new set of celebrity AIs. Built in collaboration with — 28 AI characters based on famous people. Celebrities from around the world in sports, music, social media, and more are powered entirely by AI.
The list features a who's who of Western media, including Tom Brady, Charli D'Amelio, Snoop Dogg, and Paris Hilton. The idea here is that Meta's version of these AIs (Facebook says it's built on Llama 2) can be used by users across all of Meta's various platforms (chat, VR experiences, etc.) This means that you can call them into a conversation and provide them with a variety of information. We provide fun and helpful advice about your area of expertise.
Tom Brady's Blue (not Bro) chews the fat about sports. Charli's Coco will help you dance. Billie, played by Kendall Jenner, offers some “ride or die” advice. Some people are a little more left-wing. Paris plays Amber (the character) who helps solve the mystery of the criminal. Snoop won't help you make music or build a hydroponic business. He's, uh, the “Dungeon Master.”
For now, Mehta is being a little cautious about the details of how the celebrity characters are constructed. Here's what we know and what we don't know.
— The company confirmed to us that these are built on the Llama 2 large-scale language model released earlier this year.
— These are generated AI animations, not video clips. Meta took pictures of the people the AI represented and used “generative technology” to turn those disparate animations into a coherent user experience. The purpose of the model is to maintain each character's “unique personality and tone” while allowing each to provide useful information. He declined to comment on whether only the person in question was filmed or whether clips of other people were used to supplement the footage.
— Mark Zuckerberg described “thousands of hours” on stage working with red teams and prompts to train characters to avoid ambiguous topics, and how video interactions are textual This included matching the base response. Conversations take place via chat.
— The chat aspect is important. There is no audio at this time, but it looks like it will be released next year. I can't help but wonder: Will it be more successful than Amazon's celebrity Alexa voice, which shut down the service earlier this year?
— There are no details at all about the business model behind this. We asked how Meta compensates celebrities for their image rights, but a spokesperson replied, “No comment.”
But if you think about some of the existing meta-businesses, Instagram, for example, has a pretty established model for paying creators. And the entire company operates primarily on advertising revenue. You may already be hearing that cry. These characters will be displayed across multiple social platforms and interfaces (mobile, web, VR). Influencers and other media personalities can then use them to maintain authenticity to the brand, while also allowing Kendall Inc. to amplify Kendall's output and engagement.
How can AI trick us into thinking we're seeing or hearing real-world humans doing human things when in fact we're seeing something similar? I'm just beginning to understand. Sadly, there's no real Pope rocking Balenciaga, and there's no new Drake track either.
So when Mr. Zuckerberg first revealed his “character” during today's keynote, it was hard to understand what we were looking at. Are these video clips? Are the AI characters really responding to what Zack has written? Unlike the support Meta thinks he might get from a chatbot someday, as a “dungeon master” A live demo featuring a nodding and smiling Snoop Dogg did nothing to answer these questions. (Note:External RPGs make on-stage demos very boring and clunky,” one of my colleagues joked on Slack. )
If there's one overriding message in today's AI news, it's this: “Leave dystopias at the door!” Meta often has a talent for pulling the creepy rug out from under us, and that's the aim here, capitalizing on the element of surprise. Masu. We want to know about these people. And now we can all talk to Tom, Kendall, and Paris, and metas can build authentic experiences and maybe even businesses out of it.
