Last month, Meta-formerly-Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg got on stage to unveil a slew of new AI chatbots, many of which are based top-tier celebrities from sports and television. There’s a “wisecracking sports debater” called Bru, based on NFL legend Tom Brady. There’s Tamika, an “anime-obsessed cosplay expert,” based on Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka. Calvin “Snoop Dogg” Broadus Junior will be your next “Dungeon Master,” while Paris Hilton will help you solve whodunnits as “Amber.” All told, Meta announced a whopping 28 AIs that you can message on the company’s various platforms. Roughly half are based on real-life celebrities, albeit with modified names, some of whom raked in millions for the deals. And as it turns out, an astonishing number of those celebrities previously cashed in on cryptocurrencies and NFTs — or at least they did back before markets bottomed out. Some of them even actively promoted FTX, the collapsed crypto empire whose founder Sam Bankman-Fried is on trial this week for defrauding investors of billions of dollars. In other words, the shameful “crypto to AI pipeline” is hitting a fever pitch, with stars ditching web3 in favor of the latest cash grab. By our count, three out of the initial 14 celebrities listed in Meta’s announcement last month were either directly or indirectly invested in FTX. Two of them, Brady and Osaka, were actually sued over misleading their fans by shilling the exchange. In March 2022, roughly eight months before FTX’s collapse, Osaka became an FTX “global ambassador,” receiving an equity stake…The Same Celebrities Who Shilled Crypto Are Now Turning Themselves Into Facebook's AI Chatbots