The two best-documented celebrity avatar experiments point in opposite directions. ABBA Voyage, the London residency in which digital avatars of the band perform in a purpose-built 3,000-capacity arena, reported revenue of £104.3 million in 2024 and topped one million tickets for the year, according to IQ Magazine. Meta's AI characters played by celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner and Paris Hilton, launched in late 2023, were switched off less than a year later after users showed little interest. The difference is not the technology. It is what fans were being sold.

What sold: the artist's own work, extended

ABBA Voyage opened in May 2022 and is built on the band's own catalogue. Fans pay to see ABBA's songs performed by ABBA's likeness, and the avatar is a delivery format for work they already value. The business is steady rather than spectacular: pre-tax profit fell to £4.2 million in 2024 from £6.1 million in 2023 on almost flat revenue, per the same filing coverage.

HYBE took a similar approach in music production. In May 2023 its artist Lee Hyun released “Masquerade” as MIDNATT in six languages, using voice synthesis from Supertone, the AI audio company HYBE acquired in 2022 for about $32 million, to correct pronunciation across Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Vietnamese. The singer is real and the voice is his; the AI widens where the work can travel.

Grimes went further, inviting fans in April 2023 to make songs with an AI model of her voice in exchange for a 50% royalty split, then releasing the Elf.Tech tool. It is a licensing model the artist set and controls, not a likeness a platform rented.

What did not: a famous face on a generic chatbot

Meta's characters gave each celebrity a different name and persona — Kendall Jenner appeared as “Billie,” Snoop Dogg as a “Dungeon Master” — running on the company's Llama models. The Information reported that Meta paid some of the celebrities millions for their likenesses. Users were not buying anything the stars had made, and engagement never followed. Meta replaced the lineup with AI Studio, which lets users build their own characters.

Why it matters

For labels, agencies and avatar vendors, the evidence so far says the licence for a face is worth little on its own. Revenue has followed avatars that carry the artist's own catalogue, voice and participation, where the artist sets the terms. That is also where regulation is heading: labelling duties such as those in the EU AI Act make it harder to pass off a synthetic persona as anything other than what it is, which removes the novelty premium from detached celebrity bots and leaves authorship as the thing fans pay for.

Key Facts

  • ABBA Voyage: £104.3m revenue and 1m+ tickets in 2024; pre-tax profit £4.2m (IQ Magazine)
  • Meta celebrity AI characters launched late 2023, shut down within a year for low engagement
  • HYBE's MIDNATT released a six-language single in May 2023 using Supertone voice AI
  • Grimes offered a 50% royalty split for AI songs using her voice (April–May 2023)

Follow-up coverage

Later reporting on this story: Korea's new virtual idols debut before the rights are settled (Sep 9, 2026); Taemin fans push back on robot shows built on his IP: who owns a K-pop likeness in a robot? (Sep 28, 2026).

Frequently Asked

Which celebrity AI avatar projects have worked commercially?

ABBA Voyage is the clearest case: the London avatar residency that opened in May 2022 reported revenue of £104.3 million and more than one million tickets sold in 2024, per IQ Magazine.

Why did Meta shut down its celebrity AI chatbots?

Meta launched AI characters played by celebrities including Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner and Paris Hilton in late 2023 and removed them less than a year later, after users showed little interest and it shifted to AI Studio, a tool for users to build their own chatbots.

Where do fans draw the line on celebrity AI avatars?

The record so far suggests the line is less about synthetic versus real and more about authorship: avatars that carry the artist's own music and involvement have found paying audiences, while licensed faces attached to generic chatbots have not.

Sources & Further Reading