Meta AI Personas: How You Can Chat With ‘Kendall Jenner’ Using AI Technology

Interactive technology is about to reach yet another tipping point, and that’s all thanks to nascent commercial artificial intelligence (AI) technology that is now rapidly gaining steam. So much so in fact that thanks to it, you may even be able to chat with your favourite celebrities such as Kendall Kennee using a new project spearheaded by tech conglomerate Meta known as AI Personas.

While relatively under the radar, some Instagram users may already be aware of the project through a series of well-placed advertisements on the platform, featuring what appears to be Kendall Jenner, Paris Hilton, and even Snoop Dogg taking turns marketing the new AI chatbot service. But here’s the twist: they aren’t actually who they appear to be.

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Meet Meta AI Personas, featuring Kendall Jenner, Paris Hilton and more

The Meta AI Personas service is in fact a brand-new chatbot application that made its global debut earlier last month during the company’s Meta Connect event. As company founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg describes the new host of celebrity avatars, “This isn’t just going to be about answering queries, this is about entertainment,”.

A tech demonstration showed how AI Personas such as Max (played by chef Roy Choi) providing users with cooking advice, while Snoop Dogg’s alter ego assumed the role of what appears to be a tabletop roleplay Dungeon Master.

In essence, they utilise the company’s generative AI technology and marry it with celebrity likenesses and voices to create a completely new host of personas. This is to say that while it may look like Kendall Jenner is taking the time out of her schedule to respond to you, the fact is you’re receiving replies from a Meta AI Persona known as ‘Billie’.

Each individual from the project will be paid a considerable sum over the course of years for the rights to reproduce and use their likeness and voice, as per insider knowledge on the project cited by The Information. Celebrities are reportedly looking at a payout in the millions.

How can you try out the Meta AI Persona feature?

If you’re interested in giving the chatbots a try for yourself, you can simply head over to their respective accounts on Instagram, Facebook, or WhatsApp and begin by selecting ‘AI Chat’. But instead of the usual chat interface, things will look a little different on your Instagram app when interacting with these Meta AI Persona characters.

A window showing the faces of your respective personas of choice will appear alongside your chat, and you will be able to see how they react to your messages in real time as you receive AI-generated responses. The experience isn’t dissimilar to that of using ChatGPT, only in this case, it has been humanised by the addition of a familiar face to an otherwise disembodied intelligence.

Keep in mind that as the feature is still in its beta stages, only a select handful of users on both Instagram and Facebook will be able to interact with the Meta AI Persona characters. At this point, 28 characters are available, 15 of which feature celebrity likenesses.

Feature and hero image credit: meetthedungeonmaster/Instagram, amberthedetective/Instagram, yoursisbillie/Instagram

The story first appeared on Lifestyle Asia Kuala Lumpur