Meta is developing an artificial intelligence version of Mark Zuckerberg that would greet employees in his stead, according to a Financial Times report. The system is being trained on Zuckerberg’s mannerisms, tone and publicly available statements, the report said.
The project is part of a broader push inside Meta to build photorealistic, 3D-animated AI characters that can handle interactions. Those characters have reportedly been in development for some time, with the Zuckerberg version intended to stand in for the chief executive when employees interact with it.
The timing gives the effort added weight. Last year, Meta issued an internal memo suggesting it could roll out facial recognition technology “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” a line that drew fierce criticism. A coalition of more than 70 civil rights organizations later called that behavior “vile behavior” in a letter warning Zuckerberg about adding facial recognition to Meta smart glasses.
That tension matters because Meta is not just experimenting with a novelty avatar. It is building AI systems that would speak and respond in the voice of its founder while the company remains under scrutiny for how it plans to use similar technology more broadly. The unanswered question now is how much of Zuckerberg’s public presence Meta is willing to hand over to software, and how quickly it plans to do the same with its other AI characters.
