As the Financial Times (FT) reported Monday (April 13), the tech giant has been building photorealistic, AI-powered 3D characters that users can engage with in real time.
Sources told the FT that Meta has recently started to prioritize a Zuckerberg AI character that can interact with workers in his place. One source said the CEO is personally involved in testing and training this likeness, which could provide conversation and feedback to employees.
This involves training the AI on the executive’s mannerisms, tone and publicly available statements, along with his recent thinking on company strategies, so that workers might feel more connected to the digital Zuckerberg through interactions with it.
Sources told the FT that Zuckerberg has become increasingly hands-on as he oversees Meta’s AI efforts, spending five to 10 hours a week coding on various AI projects and sitting in during technical reviews.
PYMNTS has contacted Meta for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.
The FT notes that this AI likeness is separate from Zuckerberg’s efforts to build a “CEO agent” to help him in his job.
A report last month from the Wall Street Journal said this agent has been helping Zuckerberg get information faster, finding answers for him that would normally require going through layers of people. That report added that the project is in keeping with Meta’s view that AI adoption is vital to its success. Zuckerberg addressed this idea on an earnings call in January.
“We’re investing in AI-native tooling so individuals at Meta can get more done. We’re elevating individual contributors and flattening teams,” he said. “If we do this, then I think that we’re going to get a lot more done and I think it’ll be a lot more fun.”
Meta is not alone in creating an AI version of its CEO. During a podcast interview earlier this year, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said his employees had created an AI clone of their boss.
Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote last week about Meta’s new Muse Spark AI model, and the advantage the company enjoys thanks to access to years of user behavior, preferences, and social signals.
“No other AI company holds that position,” the report said. “OpenAI knows what users have asked previously. Google knows what they search. Meta knows what they buy, who they follow and what they scroll past. It also strengthens Meta’s core business. More context leads to better targeting. Better targeting drives higher-value advertising.”