Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a suite of AI-based chatbots, including one that portrays rapper Snoop Dogg as a role-playing game Dungeon Master, during the Meta Connect 2023 Keynote on September 27. Each of Meta’s 28 new bots (which are not yet available to the public) is a curated character represented by a celebrity, like tennis star Naomi Osaka, who represents an anime superfan, or Mr. Beast, who acts as “the big brother here for the jokes the banter and not the feels,” a reveal trailer indicates.
The Verge reports that Meta’s core chatbot assistant, Meta AI, is trained on a “custom-made” language model grounded in Llama 2, Meta’s reaction to OpenAI model ChatGPT. Zuckerberg said that, unlike Meta AI, the characters “don’t, for the most part, have access to real-time information yet” but didn’t specify what they were trained on; Kotaku requested comment.
It doesn’t seem like the bots take on the conversation patterns of the celebrities they resemble, the way musician Grimes’ Twitter bot, which is trained on her real Twitter, mimics her. The actors, “a bunch of pretty awesome people,” Zuckerberg said, ranging from basketball legend Dwyane Wade to 19-year-old TikToker Charli D’Amelio, seem to only be involved for visual flair.
Zuckerberg pulled up his Snoop Dogg bot for a live demo, telling it that he wanted to “forge ahead” in the medieval narrative it created.
“You gather your weapons and armor, ready to face whatever dangers lie ahead,” the bot replied while an image of Snoop Dogg nodded a bit incongruously in the top right corner. “The villagers bid you farewell, wishing you luck on your quest.”
“I mean, who hasn’t wanted to play a text adventure game with Snoop Dogg?” Zuckerberg wondered, placing emphasis on the “Dogg,” while the bot spun a generic questline involving a “mysterious elven rogue” and “wise cleric.”
To take you deeper into the uncanny valley, Meta will add voice to its characters “probably early next year,” Zuckerberg said, promising that these characters aren’t “just gonna be about answering queries,” but “about entertainment, and about helping you do things to connect with the people around you, and helping you accomplish the things that you want across whatever your different goals are.” And if one of your goals is to generate a lifeless, single-player RPG while a rapper stares at you like he’s falling asleep, then this is a great day.