Mark Zuckerberg is Building a Photorealistic AI Avatar of Himself to ‘Engage’ With Employees
Mark Zuckerberg has been referred to as the “Eye of Sauron” by his employees, and now the Meta CEO is taking that moniker a step further by building a photorealistic AI clone of himself.
The Financial Times reports that Zuckerberg is personally involved with building the avatar that is made to “engage with employees in his stead.” It’s all part of Meta’s push into the generative AI industry.
The 3D-animated AI is reportedly trained on photos of Zuckerberg and it can converse with employees through a clone of the billionaire’s voice. The model is also being trained on Zuckerberg’s mannerisms, his tone, and the content of his public statements. Meta is also trying to add in Zuckerberg’s thinking on things like the company’s strategy. The hope is that employees will “feel more connected” to the company’s founder.
The Zuckerberg avatar project has splintered off from another project to build a “CEO agent”, originally designed to support Zuckerberg himself. If the AI avatar goes well, then it could be rolled out so that other famous or notable people can make similar clones of themselves.
Meta is behind its rivals, Google and OpenAI, in the AI arms race, and is spending billions to catch up. The company said in January that it plans to spend somewhere between $115 billion and $135 billion in the pursuit of AI superintelligence. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing: a report last month said that the AI image model it’s working on, codenamed “Avocado”, is not as good as rival models from Google and OpenAI. The disappointing results forced it to push back its release date.
The FT reports that Zuckerberg is getting his hands dirty in the AI race, spending five to 10 hours per week “vibe-coding” different AI projects. Meta did release an AI model this week called Muse Spark, which is an AI virtual assistant that can deliver personalized and visual responses.
Employees across Meta are being encouraged to do some vibe coding themselves, to streamline processes and become more efficient. But some worry that these exercises could lead to job cuts.
