Want to get ahead? Talk to your (AI) CEO
By Lisa Eadicicco, CNN
(CNN) — Alex Alonso cloned his CEO. Well, sort of.
Alonso used emails and public appearances to create an AI chatbot of Johnny Taylor Jr., the CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management, where Alonso is the chief data and analytics officer.
The AI CEO gives Alonso feedback on work ideas, so he make sure the ideas he presents to the real Taylor are already sharp.
The results have been a “work in progress,” says Alonso, but the chatbot has encouraged him to approach problems differently.
The Taylor bot isn’t the only version of an artificial intelligence CEO these days. Companies are starting to make more AI copies of their CEOs to to make senior leadership more accessible to both employees and the public. It’s the latest labor twist as AI prompts concerns about rank-and-file workers losing their jobs to the tech.
Sumeet Gupta, senior managing director at FTI Consulting, said the firm has seen more interest in AI digital twins in the last six months, and Suman Kanuganti, CEO and co-founder of Personal AI, which helps companies build AI doubles, says the company began seeing more demand for this type of work in late 2024.
And at least some employees are already on board.
“I’m not going to say that my colleagues are trying to bribe me for access to this GPT, but you’d be surprised,” Alonso said.
A CEO that can meet anytime and speak any language
Companies like the idea of having an AI CEO available at all times. Klarna, for example, launched a hotline in June that anyone can call to chat with an AI version of CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski.
The hotline has gotten more than 3,000 calls from people asking about topics such as how the app works, Klarna’s payment options and issues related to refunds, the company said in a statement to CNN.
Siemiatkowski’s avatar also delivered highlights from the company’s earnings report earlier this year. Zoom, the popular video conferencing platform, has done the same.
The technology could also reduce the need for executives to travel as often, said Scott Likens, global chief AI engineer for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), especially since AI avatars can be programmed to speak different languages.
Jean-Yves Couput, senior executive advisor to the CEO at sports apparel and equipment brand Salomon, says the company is experimenting with an AI persona of chief executive Guillaume Meyzenq for almost exactly that reason. The company wanted global employees to have broader access to Meyzenq and to preserve his vision and knowledge in the event of a CEO transition, Couput said.
“The No. 1 point was to make sure that Guillaume was available to every single employee of the company, whoever they are and wherever they live, 24/7,” he said in an interview with CNN.
About 40 people within the company currently have access to Meyzenq’s AI persona, according to Couput, with the heaviest users being new hires. The company is now looking at other ways to use the tech, like developing an AI-generated “buddy” that can help new employees get acquainted with the company.
AI personas like these are usually restricted to specific topics, like a company’s financial history or HR resources, said Gupta, and are trained on company data and the likeness of the individual, which may include things like recordings of public appearances and emails.
Klarna says it used Siemiatkowski’s “real voice, communication style, and insights” to create its AI CEO hotline.
Developing the AI double doesn’t take long once you have the necessary data. Couput says he remembers the AI twin of Salomon’s CEO being finished in a matter of days after the company provided Personal AI with the necessary documents.
Alonso of SHRM estimates it took him only around four hours to develop the AI chatbot of Taylor, although he spread the work out over about six weeks since it started as a personal project.
Gathering the necessary data might be the most time-consuming step, according to Gupta and Likens, since the data being used to train the AI must be compliant with data privacy laws.
“There’s a lot of regulatory framework that you have put around the data,” said Likens, who added that companies should train their AI models on data that’s already been approved for the AI double’s purpose, such as sharing information with employees or the public.
AI and the future of jobs
The rise of AI has raised alarm about how the tech could change the workforce. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned earlier this year that AI could lead to a spike in unemployment for white collar professions.
The tech sector has been hit especially hard. Amazon, Meta and Salesforce have all made significant staff cuts this year at least in part tied to AI. A computer science degree was once a golden ticket into a high-paying industry on a seemingly endless upswing. But recent graduates in the field are struggling to find work as demand for entry-level roles has waned. Employment for fresh graduates with computer science and math degrees has dropped 8% since 2022, according to Oxford Economics.
AI avatars like those used by Klarna and Salomon are meant to be extensions of their CEO, not replacements. But businesses are increasingly investing in AI agents to help with day-to-day work, with a PwC survey of 300 senior executives released in May finding that 79% of respondents say AI agents are already being adopted in their businesses. Chuck Reynolds, a managing director at LEK Consulting, said that while the company isn’t seeing demand for AI doubles, clients have been showing interest in AI agents.
But not everyone believes AI will spell trouble for job seekers and new graduates. There’s the argument that AI will lead to new types of jobs and free up workers to focus on the more rewarding aspects of their role.
CNN had its own question for the Klarna AI avatar when we called the hotline: Will the company replace its staff with AI?
“That’s a very thoughtful question, and it’s something many people are considering,” the AI persona replied. “At Klarna we see AI as a tool to enhance what we do, not to replace our human teams entirely.”
The-CNN-Wire
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