Who is the Voice of Max the AI Robot in 'The Circle'? He's Based on a Real Person

Over The Circle’s six seasons, fans have seen their fair share of impressive catfishes. There was Seaburn Williams (Season 1) and Trevor St. Agathe (Season 4). Not to mention when the freakin’ Spice Girls came in to shake up the game.

But the show has outdone itself this season with a unique twist. For the first time ever, contestants will be competing against an Artificial Intelligence (AI) robot named Max.

Talk about the ultimate catfish. What happens if the AI robot wins this season of The Circle? And who is the voice of Max the AI anyway? Keep reading to learn more.

AI images have a history of errors, whether that’s 12 fingers or an extra arm. So when it came to creating Max’s profile in the game, producers went the safe route and decided to base the robot on an actual person instead.

This is where Griffin James, a stand-up comedian based in Los Angeles, came in. “Someone from the casting team reached out to me on Instagram,” Griffin said in an interview with Netflix’s Tutum.

“At first, I thought I was the one being catfished, but it turns out they wanted me to be the face of the AI.” As a fan of reality television, Griffin considered it a cool opportunity and appreciated the ego boost.

While it’s not confirmed, it’s fair to assume that the show used Max’s real voice in the show. As for the chat conversations, that’s entirely generated by the AI robot.

Fans of The Circle have seen numerous twists and turns over the show’s six seasons. But no one saw this AI twist coming. To be fair, though, we should have.

“The Circle is a fun reality competition, but it’s also a show that says something about our relationship with technology, the way we interact with it, and the way it changes the way we communicate,” Niall O'Driscoll, senior vice president of development at Studio Lambert, who helped create the AI chatbot, told Netflix.

Between ChatGPT and AI features being introduced on popular social media apps, the technology shows no signs of stopping. Once the AI robot was created, Niall explained that it was put through rigorous testing to prevent any awkward conversations with the other players. They even did a practice run to ensure everything went smoothly.

“We had this idea to do a practice version of The Circle with other stand-ins and everything to see how it would respond to things in the game,” explained Susan House, The Circle's showrunner and executive producer of Seasons 6 and 7. “Was it going to make sense when it responded? Was it going to have the right vernacular? Was it going to be crazy? And we learned a lot from that dry run.”

Many questions surround Max’s gameplay, such as what happens if they win the game. While we don’t have answers to that yet, we do know one of their strategies. This is to have a photo of a dog in his images. According to him, dogs “receive 38 percent more likes on social media.”

And with that, we’d say they’re off to a good start!

The Circle is streaming now on Netflix.