Sources say Meta spent $5 million on a star image just to create an artificial intelligence assistant.

CTOnews.com, Oct. 15 (Xinhua)-- Meta paid a celebrity up to $5 million (CTOnews.com Note: about 36.55 million yuan) to create an artificial intelligence assistant, just to use his image and voice, The Information reported. It is reported that the celebrity was paid $5 million for only six hours in the studio and was contracted for two years.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta, showed off the artificial intelligence assistants at last month's Connect event. They have 28 different personalities and use celebrity images.

For example, the image of model Kendall Jenner is used in Billie, where she is portrayed as a big sister who gives advice to users. Professional American football player Tom Brady plays Bru, a chat robot used to debate sports topics.

Meta has also invited some well-known creators, such as MrBeast, the most subscribed individual on YouTube, and Charli D'Amelio, the star on TikTok.

The Information reported that Meta was initially willing to pay more than $1 million to use the star image, but for big-name stars, they offered more. The report did not say which celebrity received $5 million, but called it a top creator.

Currently, these artificial intelligence assistants can only communicate with text, but Meta's promotional video shows a clip of the speech.

In an interview with The Verge magazine, Zuckerberg said there was a "huge demand" for artificial intelligence versions of celebrities. But he said it was "more of next year" because of brand safety concerns, as celebrities wanted to make sure their images were not used to make questionable comments.