Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has received an offer from a famous face for his personal artificial-intelligence assistant: Robert Downey Jr.
Mr. Zuckerberg turned to fans on Thursday for suggestions on who might provide the voice work for his AI and soon heard from Marvel’s “Iron Man.” The famous actor, whose character Tony Stark interacts with a computer named Jarvis, said he would be happy to oblige — for charity.
“I’ll do in a heartbeat if Bettany gets paid and donates it to a cause of Cumberbatch’s choosing…that’s the right kind of STRANGE!” Mr. Downey Jr. said on the CEO’s Facebook page.
Actor Paul Bettany voices Jarvis in the “Iron Man” movies and Benedict Cumberbatch will play a mystic arts master named “Doctor Strange” in a Marvel Studios film to be released Nov. 4.
Mr. Zuckerberg announced his AI project in early January, saying on his Facebook page that it was a “personal challenge for 2016” to build AI that could help “run his home.”
“You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man,” Mr. Zuckerberg said Jan. 3. “I’m going to start by exploring what technology is already out there. Then I’ll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home — music, lights, temperature and so on. I’ll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell. I’ll teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max’s room that I need to check on when I’m not with her. On the work side, it’ll help me visualize data in VR to help me build better services and lead my organizations more effectively.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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