By Emmanuel Ogbodo
Google is reportedly developing AI-powered chatbots modeled after celebrities and popular YouTube influencers. This move places Google alongside startups like Character.ai and tech giant Meta, which have also explored similar AI innovations.
According to The Information, these celebrity chatbots will leverage Google’s Gemini family of large language models. Google aims to partner with various influencers and celebrities to bring this concept to life. Additionally, Google is working on a feature that will allow users to create their own chatbots by describing desired personalities and appearances, mirroring the capabilities offered by Character.ai. Notably, Noam Shazeer, co-founder of Character.ai and a former Google engineer, played a significant role in the development of the “transformers” technology that powers modern generative AI.
Specific details about which celebrities or influencers will be part of Google’s initiative are still under wraps. For context, Meta’s celebrity chatbots feature personalities like TikTok star Charli D’Amelio, YouTube sensation Mr. Beast, Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, and Paris Hilton. Character.ai offers a diverse range of figures, from politicians and philosophers to fictional characters and quirky options like a talking block of cheese. Google’s project is led by Ryan Germick, a veteran executive known for his work on Google Doodles, and a team of ten.
The report indicates that Google’s celebrity chatbots may be more experimental and could initially be limited to Google Labs, the company’s platform for testing new products, rather than a broad release.
