- Meta has scrapped its celebrity AI assistants after less than a year.
- The company is shifting focus to its new AI Studio, which lets users create their own AI bots.
- Tech companies have had difficulty translating the AI hype into successful products.
Meta has scrapped its celebrity AI assistants after less than a year.
The company is pivoting to focus on its new AI Studio, in a move first reported by The Information.
On Wednesday's earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the new studio was an important part of the company's vision to enable "people to create their own AIs."
Meta's celebrity chatbots have been around for less than a year. The assistants were unveiled during the company's Connect event in September as one of the major AI product announcements.
Meta used celebrities' likenesses, such as including Kendall Jenner, Tom Brady, and Snoop Dogg, to create chatbots with distinct personalities that could chat with users on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The bots were also given their own Instagram pages, which now appear to have been taken down.
Meta reportedly paid creators to use their likeness for over two years, meaning they have cut the contracts short. According to a report from The Information published at the time, Meta paid one unnamed top creator as much as $5 million over two years for six hours of work in a studio to use their likeness as an AI assistant.
Representatives for Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment, made outside normal working hours.
Meta's retreat from the celebrity-inspired chatbots shows how difficult it has been for tech companies to develop successful generative AI products. After the initial success of ChatGPT, Big Tech rushed to release a flood of AI-powered products, many of which were met with a muted reaction from consumers.
The technology's hype has attracted billions of dollars of investment, and companies have responded by spending big on development. However, it's still unclear whether AI can generate enough returns to match the hype.
In Meta's case, investors are apparently still prepared to forgive the company's high AI spend.
On Wednesday's earnings call, Zuckerberg said Meta would keep spending big this year to support AI research — he was rewarded with a stock rise of nearly 7% after hours.
