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The long-running rumor that Mark Zuckerberg is secretly a robot is starting to feel a lot less like a joke.<\/p>\n
According to a report by the Financial Times<\/em><\/a>, Meta is building out a \u201cphotorealistic, AI-powered 3D\u201d version of its CEO that employees can interact with and get direct feedback from. Sources told the publication that the bot will be trained on his image, mannerisms, tone, speaking style and public statements to give employees a fully authentic Zuck experience. Zuckerberg himself is directly involved with training the AI avatar \u201cso that employees might feel more connected to the founder through interactions with it,\u201d according to the Financial Times<\/em>. He also started spending five to 10 hours per week coding AI projects and joining in on technical reviews.<\/p>\n (Meta has not yet responded to Fast Company<\/em>\u2019s request for comment.)<\/p>\n In the ongoing AI race among other tech giants like OpenAI and Google, Meta has embraced the technology to the fullest. It\u2019s not the company\u2019s first rodeo with AI doppelgangers: In October 2023, Meta announced partnerships<\/a> with celebrities\u2014like Kendall Jenner, Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton\u2014to create chatbot versions of themselves. (They later discontinued the initiative after it received backlash.) In 2024, Meta introduced \u201cAI Studio\u201d to all creators, allowing them to generate custom AI chatbots. Earlier this year, however, the company banned teens<\/a> from accessing the character chatbots over safety concerns.<\/p>\n Meta has also pushed its staff to use AI tools in their workflows, even encouraging employees to design their own AI agents to streamline and automate tasks. This has sparked fears of layoffs among staffers, according to Financial Times.<\/em> Last month, Reuters reported that Meta was planning layoffs that could impact 20% of the company<\/a> to offset the cost of AI. <\/p>\n The internet responded to the news of an AI-generated Zuckerberg in typical internet fashion. \u201cRobozuck would 100% be more personable than Meatzuck,\u201d one Redditor commented.<\/a> <\/p>\n \u201cIf a CEO can be replaced by AI then none of them should be worth billions,\u201d another Reddit user said. <\/p>\n \u201cThe closest we\u2019ve come to a human Mark Zuckerberg,\u201d a third joked<\/a>.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal<\/em> reported that Zuckerberg was creating an AI agent<\/a> of himself to help him complete daily tasks\u2014though that was a separate endeavor from Meta\u2019s project to clone him.
Sources told the Financial Times <\/em>that if this experiment goes well, creators might be able to create clones of their own. Maybe we\u2019ll all get to see the day where our photorealistic AI clones do the work we don\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n