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This week, an update to Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses introduced the option of substituting a celebrity voice for their generic AI voice. If you've ever wanted John Cena, Awkwafina, Keegan-Michael Key, or Kristen Bell to tell you your battery is at 33%, you're in luck.
I really like my Meta Ray-Bans, as you can see from my review, but I really hate when celebrities are inserted where they don't belong. Back in the pre-smartphone days, I had a TomTom turn-by-turn direction device with the option of replacing the unit’s voice, and I quickly learned that I do not want to take a road trip with John Cleese giving directions, in character as a stuck-up British doof. So it was with trepidation that I checked out Meta's crop of stars-in-your-eyeglasses.
I’m happy (and a little shocked) to report that Meta’s AI's use of celebrity voices isn’t totally annoying. Meta chose to have its new voices mimic the tone, inflection, and pitch of celebrities, but not try to ape the personality of celebrities, so you're basically just getting some new voices instead of a whole schtick.
Installing the new voices on your glasses is easy. Here’s a step-by-step:
Open the Meta View app on your phone.
Click “Meta AI.”
Click “Language and Voice.”
Make your celebrity selection, then hit “save” on the top right.
Once they're installed, your glasses work exactly as they did before. Say "hey, Meta," and ask it to read a sign, give you a weather report, or tell you a joke, and it will, but with a different, semi-recognizable voice.
As a test of how close the AI comes to sounding like the celebrities it’s going for, I had my wife test out all four voices and see if she could identify who was speaking. She got all of them wrong. She was sure John Cena was Jon Hamm, and thought Awkwafina might be an NPR host. So they don’t sound that much like celebrities, especially since they're not saying the things a celebrity would say.
While these star voices are not as annoying as they could be, they're still kind of annoying. Some celebrities are just better AI subjects than others. Here are my ratings, in order of least to most annoying.
Awkwafina: AI Awkwafina’s medium pitch and natural-sounding inflections sound the least like a computer. I made her voice my default. Verdict: not annoying.
John Cena: The wrestler-turned-actor has a distinctive, deep voice that works well as an AI agent, but AI Cena occasionally sounds very fake and computer-like. Verdict: a little annoying.
Kristen Bell: This actress has a naturally high voice, and her inflections and emphasis often take it into even higher registers. There’s something about the AI version of Bell that comes off as sing-songy too, like she's talking to a child. Verdict: annoying.
Keegan-Michael Key: I’m a fan of Key, so I’m sorry to report he’s the worst of the AI-agents. AI Keegan-Michael Key comes off as condescending and impatient, as if he’s affecting perfect pronunciation to make you feel bad. Verdict: very annoying.
I was a little disappointed that Meta doesn't try to mimic the personalities of the celebrities whose voices it licenses, because that would be funny. But then I remembered that it’s an AI, so I monkeyed around with the prompts by saying things like this: “Hey, Meta. Tell me a story using the personality of Awkwafina." This gave me the "why would anyone want this?" experience I craved, and I found that trying to get your eyeglasses to talk to you like a B-list celebrity is very of-the-moment.
AI Awkwafina says “like” and “bruh” a lot, and told me this story: “Bruh, I was at the bodega the other day and I saw this dude, right, and he was trying to pay with a coupon for a free cat. Duh.” Verdict: annoyingly hip, and doesn't even make sense.
AI Cena calls you “brother” a lot and seems to only talk about wrestling and himself as a hero. Sample story: “I stepped into the ring, brother, and delivered a thunderous attitude adjustment to the villain, saving the day for the good people.” Verdict: annoyingly egoistical.
AI Bell tells domestic stories about her family, like so: “I was trying to cook a romantic dinner and I ended up setting the kitchen towels on fire and my husband just laughed and said, ‘I guess that’s one way to get a spark in the relationship.'” Verdict: annoyingly unrealistic story.
AI Key’s stories all have urban settings, and usually involve Key cattily commenting on someone else being lame. He's always hanging out at coffeeshops and parks. Example: “OK. OK. OK. I’m at the park and this guy’s playing fetch with his dog, and the dog’s just looking at him like, ‘you’re doing this?’ Verdict: Annoyingly judgy.
