Meta, the tech giant and parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and more, is shutting down its AI chatbots for celebrities and taking a different approach to this concept (which we’ll get to in a moment).
This was Meta’s first major foray into consumer AI products, and it introduced photorealistic moving AI avatarsmodeled after the likenesses of chosen celebrities and social media influencers. These were integrated on Meta-platforms such as Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Some examples of the AI avatars on offer include Billie (modeled after Kendall Jenner), Bru (based on Tom Brady), and Dungeon Master (Snoop Dog). Despite being imbued with the power of generative AI and a celebrity resemblance, some people who tried out these “virtual celebrities” apparently just found them strange.
According to The InformationThese AI chatbots failed to attract a significant number of followers, a fact that was even more striking when compared to the official accounts of the associated celebrities. This is clearly not what Meta wanted to see, especially since it paid millions of dollars to some of these celebrities to license their likenesses.
The end result is that Meta has shut down this project (at least for now), as it is not proving to be the attention-grabber the company had envisioned.
When The Information reviewed the links to the AI avatars’ accounts on Facebook and Instagram, the site discovered a message informing potential users that the pages are no longer available. However, it appears that you can still interact with the chatbots on certain Meta platforms, but they will no longer be represented by the celebrities they’re modeled after. For example, if you view Bru’s profile on a Meta app, you’ll now be presented with an AI-generated image of a man dressed in a football kit instead of an image of Tom Brady.
Meta isn’t out of the consumer AI game just yet, because as we mentioned earlier, there’s another project in the works that launched earlier this week in the US – namely AI Studio. This new feature will allow creators to create their own AI avatars that can act as an online proxy and answer common fan questions.
According to a Meta spokesperson who provided a statement to The Information, the company has learned a lot from building these AI avatars. There’s likely still gold to be found in those AI hills when it comes to consumer chatbots and celebrity tie-ins, for any company that can credibly sell such products — and as long as that’s the case, I think we’ll see Meta working just as hard as any other company to stake its claim.
