The long-running rumor that Mark Zuckerberg is secretly a robot is starting to feel a lot less like a joke.
According to a report by the Financial Times, Meta is building out a “photorealistic, AI-powered 3D” 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 “so that employees might feel more connected to the founder through interactions with it,” according to the Financial Times. He also started spending five to 10 hours per week coding AI projects and joining in on technical reviews.
(Meta has not yet responded to Fast Company’s request for comment.)
In the ongoing AI race among other tech giants like OpenAI and Google, Meta has embraced the technology to the fullest. It’s not the company’s first rodeo with AI doppelgangers: In October 2023, Meta announced partnerships with celebrities—like Kendall Jenner, Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton—to create chatbot versions of themselves. (They later discontinued the initiative after it received backlash.) In 2024, Meta introduced “AI Studio” to all creators, allowing them to generate custom AI chatbots. Earlier this year, however, the company banned teens from accessing the character chatbots over safety concerns.
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. Last month, Reuters reported that Meta was planning layoffs that could impact 20% of the company to offset the cost of AI.
The internet responded to the news of an AI-generated Zuckerberg in typical internet fashion. “Robozuck would 100% be more personable than Meatzuck,” one Redditor commented.
“If a CEO can be replaced by AI then none of them should be worth billions,” another Reddit user said.
“The closest we’ve come to a human Mark Zuckerberg,” a third joked.
Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Zuckerberg was creating an AI agent of himself to help him complete daily tasks—though that was a separate endeavor from Meta’s project to clone him.
Sources told the Financial Times that if this experiment goes well, creators might be able to create clones of their own. Maybe we’ll all get to see the day where our photorealistic AI clones do the work we don’t want to.