Awkwafina

Awkwafina (Nora Lum, born 1988) broke out as a comic rapper on YouTube before stealing scenes in “Crazy Rich Asians” and winning the 2020 Golden Globe for Best Actress in “The Farewell” — the first performer of Asian descent to win in that category. Her gravelly, instantly identifiable voice became a franchise of its own, carrying animated roles in “Raya and the Last Dragon,” “The Bad Guys,” “Migration” and “Kung Fu Panda 4.”

The voice of Meta AI’s live demo

At Meta Connect on September 25, 2024, Meta announced that its Meta AI assistant — reaching roughly 400 million users across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger — could now answer out loud in licensed celebrity voices. Awkwafina signed on alongside Judi Dench, John Cena, Kristen Bell and Keegan-Michael Key; the Wall Street Journal reported Meta paid the celebrities millions of dollars each. Mark Zuckerberg chose her voice for the on-stage demo, asking “Hey, are live demos risky?” — to which AI-Awkwafina replied that live demos can be unpredictable.

The announcement drew a mixed public reaction — some social-media users mocked the idea of an Awkwafina-voiced assistant while others found it hilarious — but the deal itself was a clean consent-and-compensation transaction, struck a year after the Scarlett Johansson–OpenAI voice controversy made unauthorized soundalikes a Hollywood flashpoint. Awkwafina, who spent years learning to embrace a voice she was once insecure about, turned that voice into a licensed AI product.