Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB) is training a photorealistic digital version of its chief executive to interact with the company's 79,000 staff.
Meta is developing an AI-powered replica of Mark Zuckerberg designed to interact with employees on his behalf, according to a report by the Financial Times.
The project, at an early stage, is being built on Zuckerberg's speech patterns, communication style and public statements, and has been fed his current thinking on Meta's business and technology strategy.
It sits within Meta's recently established Superintelligence Labs, which has been tasked with developing lifelike AI characters capable of real-time conversation.
The project is separate from a so-called "CEO agent" reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal, which is designed to assist Zuckerberg directly by accelerating decision-making rather than standing in for him with staff.
Meta has prior experience in this area, having launched celebrity-based chatbots in September 2023, including one modelled on rapper Snoop Dogg, before opening character creation to users through a tool called AI Studio.
That programme ran into difficulty when sexually explicit personas emerged on the platform, prompting regulatory scrutiny and criticism from child safety advocates, with Meta moving in January to block teenagers from accessing its AI characters.
Superintelligence Labs released its first large language model, called Muse Spark, earlier this month, with Meta describing it as optimised for speed and choosing to keep it proprietary, departing from its previous open-source approach.
Meta's stock has risen around 7% following the Muse Spark release, leaving the company's market capitalisation at approximately $1.59 trillion.