Radio Hall of Famer, and TV personality “Charlamagne Tha God” (aka Lenard McKelvey) is investing in the future of AI.
Teaming up with AI firm MeetKai, he is bringing his brands, including content from his iHeartRadio program “The Breakfast Club” and Black Effect Podcast Network to the platform.
Part of the MeetKai business model is an interactive metaverse platform that integrates AI agents across mobile devices and headsets, manifesting them as dynamic digital avatars. In addition, MeetKai collaborates with 25 prominent brands, including The Wall Street Journal and Tripadvisor.
In an interview with ADWEEK, Charlamagne was asked why he chose to get into AI.
“The next-level evolution of social media is virtual reality. My mind is always on how people consume conversations. I always thought it would be very cool to have a virtual reality—somebody sitting at home on their computer can interact with “The Breakfast Club” instead of watching on YouTube. It’s also a lot of those old interviews we did with President Obama or Vice President Kamala Harris, Mariah Carey… you can be in those conversation now.”
When asked if people were ready to be immersed in virtual reality or saw it as far-fetched, Charlamagne compared it to the evolution of Smartphones.
“I’m already seeing people invested in the VR world, walking around with the headsets. And virtual reality video games are extremely big right now. Remember when cell phones were huge, and then they scaled down to compact smartphones?”
“I think we’ll see similar growth in the metaverse when headsets become more advanced. One thing that drew me to VR was the Creed boxing game. I love the Creed movie and boxing, and to be in that world just made so much sense. When you allow people to not only create their own world but be in worlds that they’re already familiar with, it’s going to make people want to be more involved.”
Read the entire ADWEEK interview, including comments from MeetKai’s CBO, Peter John Alexander here.
