Fancy chatting with your favorite celeb? Google is apparently working on it.
According to a report from The Information, the search engine giant is developing AI chatbots that can mimic celebrities, YouTube influencers, and fictional characters. Users will also be able to customize the chatbots by defining their personalities and appearances.
These chatbots will tap into Google's Gemini AI. The project is being led by Ryan Germick, who works on Google Doodles; he's currently seeking collaborations with influencers and celebrities, Yahoo News reports.
Like Google's other AI efforts, these chatbots will probably launch on the company's experimental Labs platform sometime this year before a wider rollout, The Information says.
It's not a novel idea. Meta debuted celebrity chatbots at its Meta Connect event in September 2023 and rolled them out a few months later on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. They resemble celebs like Kendall Jenner, Snoop Dogg, and Tom Brady, but you're not really talking to them per se. Meta says it "partnered with cultural icons and creators to play and embody some of these AIs, [so] the content you see of a celebrity is actually the celebrity playing a character."
A similar service from Character.AI, which was founded by two former Googlers, will generate celebs from a prompt and let you talk to them.
It's unclear why Google would want to dedicate resources to this type of chatbot given that Meta's celeb chatbots have a rather lackluster following, The Information notes.