Robert Downey Jr. Wants to Voice a Real-Life Jarvis for Mark Zuckerberg
With the advent of technological helpmates like Siri and Alexa, it’s probably not long before we’re all living in a version of reality that feels a lot like Spike Jonze’s Her — or Iron Man, if you’re Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook founder has been working to build his own A.I. system similar to Tony Stark’s Jarvis, and now that he’s ready to give it a voice, one Marvel star is eager to provide his services.
In a Facebook post from January, Zuckerberg said, “My personal challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work.” He went on to compare the system to Jarvis, Tony Stark’s exceedingly well-mannered A.I. system voiced by Paul Bettany in the Iron Man and Avengers films. Zuckerberg’s aims were relatively simple: Create a system that understands and responds to his voice, and controls everything in his home (you know, sort of like Amazon Echo’s Alexa).
According to a Facebook update yesterday, Zuckerberg is now looking for someone to voice his A.I., which is where Robert Downey Jr. enters the picture with a perfectly delightful meta-offer:
“This just got real,” says Zuckerberg. He can certainly afford Downey Jr.’s sizable fees, which, according to the actor, would go to Jarvis himself, Paul Bettany, who would then donate the pay to a charity of Benedict Cumberbatch’s choosing. That’s pretty darn cute.
It may not ever come to pass, but it seems there’s a very real possibility that in the near future you could boss around your very own A.I. butler who sounds like Robert Downey Jr.