Google will soon let you chat with celebrities and Youtube influencers. Kind of
Google will soon let you chat with celebrities and Youtube influencers. Kind of
It was back in September 2022 that character.ai was launched, an AI chatbot that lets you assign a character and personality to the chatbot, and it would assume that particular character. This could be a person in your life or a celebrity. Meta also has chatbots that are based on famous personalities, like Tom Brady, Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg, among others. Google is now trying to do exactly that with Gemini. Google is creating AI chatbots that are based on celebrities and YouTube influencers, according to a report by The Information. This means, when a user interacts with the chatbot, it will be like talking to a celebrity. Powering the said chatbots would be Gemini LLMs.
The company is reportedly collaborating with influencers and celebrities for this. Apart from assuming a celebrity's character, as per the report, the chatbot will also allow users to create personalised chatbots by detailing their traits and looks. Again, similar to what Character.ai does.
Now here is something interesting you should know. In November 2023, there was a Reuters report that revealed that Google was planning to invest "hundreds of millions of dollars" in character.AI. Meanwhile, Google already partners with character.ai. Last year at Google I/O 2024, the company announced that it is working with the AI startup, and the latter uses Google cloud and its tech to make its own platform more powerful. At that time, it was unclear what Google got out of the partnership, but now we know.
Fun fact no. 2: The AI chatbot startup, character.ai, was founded by ex-Google employees Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas.
Coming back to the celebrity chatbots, do note, that this is currently just something Google is trying out. Google hasn't confirmed it yet, and it hasn't even made it to Google Labs yet. If and when it even does rollout to Google Labs, there is still no guarantee this will be rolled out to the public. It might just remain an experimental product. Google does that all the time. And Google kills products all the time as well.
But that is besides the point. The point is that we want to see why Google chose to do something character.ai and Meta AI are already offering, especially when neither are really as popular as you would think, considering the model gives you the chance to interact with a celebrity. With Gemini app and Gemini Advanced coming to India with access to several Indian languages, it would be interesting to see this particular celebrity chatbot model being tested with the Indian audience. Imagine chatting with Shahrukh Khan or Pankaj Tripathi!