Meta is deploying an AI Mark Zuckerberg to communicate with employees. Here are the risks for HR.

Meta is changing the way CEOs communicate with employees.

The tech company is creating AI-powered, 3D avatars capable of holding a conversation, the Financial Times reported. And it’s starting with a characterization of CEO Mark Zuckerberg that can mimic his personality and mannerisms, and share his perspectives with Meta employees.

“What is the intent here? What is the ‘why’? If you think he’s doing this to improve HR, then you’re fooling yourself. Mark Zuckerberg is doing this because he’s got to demonstrate that Meta is making inroads into the AI world,” Patrick Riccards, crisis communications expert and CEO of the Driving Force Institute, told HR Brew.

Some (lots of?) concerns here. The only way in which AI versions of senior leaders could be helpful, is if the definition of engagement meant solely providing employees with information and access to the C-suite, Deborah Grayson Riegel, executive and communication coach and co-author of Aim High and Bounce Back, told HR Brew.

But that may not meet the expectations of transparency and authenticity that many employees have of their executives, Grayson Riegel said. “If engagement is about having deep conversations, making emotional, and not just intellectual, connections…that is not what this is.”

Replacing leaders with photorealistic AI clones may also have a negative affect on employee trust, she added. “Making it look and sound like him suggests that they see emotional connection or emotional attachment and presence as part of the product that they’re creating, and that makes it feel, in particular, concerning and dangerous.”

What HR needs to know. This initiative may create culture and engagement risks, Grayson Riegel said. It will be up to HR leaders to mitigate them and monitor how employees are communicating with AI avatars.

“​​Having your leader be available 24/7 creates a really strange culture around work and boundaries,” Grayson Riegel said. “If employees can access ‘Mark’ at any hour…it may increase the pressure to feel like you’re always on.”

There may also be HR risks.

“You’re not going to need HR departments in the future, as all the AI is going to be able to handle that,” Riccards said. He later added, “I think the companies are going to choose whatever is the most economically feasible. And I think that at the end of the day, particularly in an area like HR, the human elements, with the emotion that comes with it, just becomes too expensive to keep, particularly for a larger company.”