The almost inevitable news that Meta is building a “photorealistic” AI-powered 3D Mark Zuckerberg will surely set in motion an unstoppable trend for Silicon Valley CEOs. Your own personal Musk is just around the corner.
Mr. Zuckerberg is apparently personally involved in training and testing his avatar to engage in conversaiton with employees, programming the models behind the avatar with his mannerisms and thinking on company strategies. The idea is that employees might feel more connected to their boss by meeting him in the metaverse. This may well be true, I couldn’t say, but it is interesting to see him follow the trail blazed by noted pop singer FKA Twigs. She testified to a US Senate Judiciary subcommittee that she has developed her own deepfake version of herself (trained in her personality and able to speak in French, Korean and Japanese) so that she can leave the bots to interact with journalists and her many fans while she focuses on her music.
I’ve often said that artists can tell us more about the future than technologists (this is why, for example, I am the sponsor of the Future of Money Design Awards for art students that were presented at Pay360 in London earlier this year). It was great to this farsighted and innovative use of new technology coming from a British creative and I was not surprised to see Mr. Zuckerberg following down the same path.
Ms. Twigs said that in an age that demands a lot of press interaction and promotional work, her AI double will free her up to “spend more time making art” and I am sure that Mr. Zuckerberg’s AI double will similarly free him up for more creative tasks that talking to employees. But in era of rampant fakery, I do wonder how employees, fans, regulators or journalists will know that they are looking at the real fake Mark and not a fake fake Mark?
The problem of bogus AI-powered CEOs is much in my mind as I write becaue my good friend Howard Hall was recently subject to a clever fraud attempt using this technique. It’s worth setting this out in full, a salutary tale and a testament to some smart thinking that save a couple of hundred thousand bucks.
You have been warned.
Incidentally, given my morbid nature, I wonder if listening to employees complaining about the flavours of free ice cream in the cafeteria is really the main reason for Silicon Valley Dupes. I think there may be a much more serious reason for CEOs to retire to their bunkers and send their digital doppelgängers out into the world. We have already seen one CEO assassinated on the way to board meeting in New York and Molotov cocktails thrown at the house of Antropic CEO Sam Altman. With prediction markets booming n the darkest corners of the internet, and spending on CEO security is shooting up.
In the US, median spending on security for C-level executives had already gone up 16% to a record $106,530 in 2024 with coverage going from a quarter of those executives to a third. Technology companies had the biggest growth in implementing security measures for executives, with a three-quarters jump in those receiving the benefits, and that was long before someone opened fire on Sam Altman’s house (not the same people who tried to firebomb, it seems.)
Sending your AI to testify before Congress in the metaverse or tasking your avatar with visiting employees in their cubicles to brighten their days, while you remain in an underground lair below a Pacific island, would seem the natural modus operandi for a happening 21st-century corporation.
Snippings 