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Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, will use the voices of celebrities like legendary British actress Dame Judi Dench and American wrestler-actor John Cena for its artificial intelligence chatbot.

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Other AI voice options for users include American actress Kristen Bell as well as actor-comedians Awkwafina and Keegan-Michael Key.

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CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the celebrity chatbots at Meta's annual Connect conference on Wednesday (Sep 25).

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Users can opt for one of these five celebrities for the digital assistant of Meta, which is similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Earlier reports had said that Meta offered millions of dollars to several celebrities to be the voice of its AI chatbot. 

Last week, Zuckerberg shared a video of Cena in the run-up to the chatbot announcement.

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Meta debuted its AI chatbots in September 2023. They had the personalities of model Kendall Jenner and rapper Snoop Dogg, but did not seem to work. Those bots were yanked by the social media giant.

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The new voiced chatbots will be launched first in the US and other English-speaking regions.

The celebrity-voiced chatbots will be featured across the Meta apps: WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.

Also read: Your phone is listening to your conversations, firm working for FB, Google confirms

Meta's move into the chatbots comes as compensation is intensifying with Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet in the field of generative AI.

OpenAI had introduced a similar voiced chatbot this May, but it became controversial after actress Scarlett Johansson complained about it being too similar to her voice, in spite of her having declined to take part in the project.

(With inputs from agencies)