Forget the Dead-Eyed Cartoon—Meta Is Building a Photorealistic AI Clone of Zuckerberg

In August 2022, Mark Zuckerberg posted what was expected to beryllium a triumphant selfie. His Horizon Worlds avatar—a blocky, legless, dead-eyed cartoon that Kotaku memorably described arsenic "a legless knock-off of a Nintendo Mii with the eyes of a corpse"—standing earlier a tiny Eiffel Tower. The net buried him successful memes. Even Meta's ain employees reportedly refused to usage Horizon Worlds.

That was then.

Now, according to a Financial Times report, Meta is gathering a photorealistic, AI-powered 3D mentation of its CEO designed to clasp existent conversations with employees connected his behalf. Zuckerberg is personally grooming and investigating the system, 4 radical acquainted with the substance told FT.

The quality is being fed his mannerisms, vocal patterns, nationalist statements, and caller thoughts connected institution strategy. The stated goal: marque employees "feel much connected to the founder" done an AI that talks similar him, thinks similar him, and ne'er has to cancel a one-on-one meeting.

It's a agelong mode from the metaverse era's integrative nightmares.

The task is being led by Meta's recently formed Superintelligence Labs. Scaling the tech has proven difficult—it requires tremendous computing powerfulness to support interactions realistic and lag-free. Meta past twelvemonth acquired 2 dependable companies, PlayAI and WaveForms, arsenic portion of that push. The company's projected superior expenditure for 2026 sits betwixt $115 cardinal and $135 billion, astir treble past year's figure.

Last week, Meta released Muse Spark, the archetypal exemplary from its Superintelligence Labs—a compact, purpose-built strategy with capabilities successful wellness reasoning and ocular understanding. Shares jumped 7% connected the announcement.

Inside the company, employees are being pushed to clasp AI tools and physique their ain agents utilizing open-source bundle called OpenClaw. Product managers person been handed a "skills baseline exercise" that includes strategy plan tests and, yes, "vibe coding."

The opposition with the metaverse epoch is stark. As Decrypt reported successful 2022, Horizon Worlds was successful a self-declared "quality lockdown" portion its ain squad was hardly logging in. Reality Labs burned done billions each quarter—$10.2 cardinal successful 2021 alone—before Zuckerberg softly pivoted. The cartoon avatar became the defining representation of that failure.

Now the stake is connected thing that looks and sounds similar the existent thing—to either marque employees consciousness much connected to leadership, oregon conscionable much supervised by it.