At its Connect event on September 27, 2023, Meta introduced 28 AI “characters” - chatbots with distinct personalities, several of them embodied by famous people. Meta’s announcement explained, “We partnered with cultural icons and influencers to play and embody some of these AIs,” and the lineup included Snoop Dogg as a Dungeon Master persona, Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner, Naomi Osaka, Paris Hilton, and MrBeast. Each character got its own profile on Instagram and Facebook so users could “explore what they’re all about.”
The bet was that recognizable personalities would make AI chat feel fun and personal rather than utilitarian. It did not work. The celebrity personas drew little sustained engagement, and in mid-2024 - less than a year after the splashy launch - Meta retired them and pivoted to AI Studio, a tool letting ordinary users build their own AI characters. Meta also pulled down a separate set of AI-run Instagram and Facebook accounts after they attracted unwanted attention.
The episode sat alongside Meta’s serious AI push - the Meta AI assistant and the open-weight Llama models - as a reminder that even a company with enormous distribution and famous partners could not guarantee that a consumer AI feature would stick.
Why business readers should care: the celebrity-persona experiment shows that star power and distribution are not enough to make companion AI succeed. Engagement with these products depends on the relationship the user forms over time, not on a famous face bolted onto a chatbot - and consumers proved quick to ignore personas that felt like marketing rather than companions.