The Metaverse is more than just a concept for television personality and radio Hall of Famer Leonard McCloy, professionally known as “Charlemagne to God.”
MeetKai is an artificial intelligence company that created Metaverse-like experiences for the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) ahead of this year’s NBA All-Star Week. The company added Charlamagne as an investor and strategic advisor in August. In addition to supporting the company, Charlemagne also brings his own programming to the platform, including content from his iHeartRadio show The Breakfast Club, as well as the Black Effect podcast network.
MeetKai has two parts to its business. The first part consists of large language models that perform complex tasks through artificial intelligence agents on behalf of humans. The second part is an interactive metaverse platform that integrates artificial intelligence into phones, tablets, and headsets by turning these agents into dynamic avatars. MeetKai works with 25 brands such as The Wall Street Journal and Tripadvisor.
Charlamagne’s investment reflects the growing interest in the social and interactive potential of artificial intelligence for people.
“It’s about bringing people into this new future of what social entertainment will look like,” Peter John Alexander, MeetKai’s chief commercial officer, told ADWEEK.
ADWEEK spoke with Charlamagne and Alexander’s MeetKai about artificial intelligence and the metaverse.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
ADWEEK: Why invest now and what made you get into the AI ​​game?
Charlemagne: The next level evolution of social media is virtual reality. My mind is always on how people use conversations. I always thought it would be really cool to have a virtual reality—someone sitting at home on their computer could interact with The Breakfast Club instead of watching YouTube. Also many of our old interviews with President Obama or Vice President Kamala Harris, Mariah Carey… you can be in that conversation now.
How is this platform different from big players like Meta?
Charlemagne: You can access this from your phone.
Alexander: Meta has done a great job focusing on hardware and the billions of dollars they’ve invested in their headsets. Clearly, Apple has done the same.
But an interesting way to think about it is democratizing access. Not everyone can go to the DNC, where Charlemagne should go. If you can create these unique spaces that anyone can access, whether it’s on a headset or a phone, that’s a game changer for us.
