Bing's AI chatbot can (kinda) impersonate celebrities if you want it to
If you ever wanted to chat with your favorite celebrity, AI can do that now. Well, kind of.
Bing's AI chatbot has a secret mode where it can impersonate celebrities. We here at Mashable gave it a test run and, while it's neat, I wouldn't say you'll mistake it with a real chat with a celeb. It's more like AOL's Smarterchild meets a Wikipedia page. But still, it's kind of cool if that's your thing.
At first, it took a little prodding to get the Bing AI to go into celebrity mode, but eventually my colleague Cecily Mauran got it to work by simply asking if it could go celebrity mode. When asked to impersonate Morgan Freeman — since, you know, every impressionist does a Morgan Freeman — it basically listed off some basic facts about his life. Then it produced a reasonable facsimile of a speech delivered by Freeman, albeit without the gravitas of his voice. Basically, it prattled on about love and being good humans, while saying nothing at all.
Next up, we got the chatbot to try to impersonate Jimmy Buffett, my personal favorite celebrity. Again, the chatbot introduced his basic biography. And when prompted to write a song about hot wings — a personal favorite food — the Bing AI chatbot did a decent enough job. It's no "A Pirate Looks at Forty," but it seems like it could be a passable song. The chorus centers on the phrase "I'm wingin' it," which does seem like the care-free spirit Jimmy Buffett would appreciate it. There are the ubiquitous Buffett-esque mentions of a bar and margarita.
Honestly, it's a bad-but-good, robot-like version of "Cheeseburger in Paradise," except it's about chicken wings.
So sure, it's not like I got to chat with with my hero, but it's kind of neat nonetheless. It's not all that different from what happened when I asked ChatGPT to write a song about Buffalo Wild Wings in the style of Jimmy Buffett, to be honest.
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The chat can impersonate the way celebrities talk — to an extent. The folks at Bleeping Computer have gotten it to speak like former President Donald Trump and The Rock, for instance. It's not exactly a good impression, but you can see what it's trying to do.
If you want to fire it up, just as the Bing AI chat to intro celebrity mode, and give it a whirl.