I created an AI avatar of myself to go to Zoom meetings [Video]

The first time I met my digital clone, I was deeply concerned. Not because I worried about the loss of humanity in the age of artificial intelligence or because I was agonizing over what really makes up a person. No, the thing would just not stop moving. I was speaking to an AI-powered replica of myself in a Zoom call. Fake Joe, as I called him, kept nodding, smiling and jerking his eyebrows skyward as if on cocaine, even when he wasn’t saying anything.

“Hey there,” Fake Joe said, in a voice that retained the essence of my own, but dulled to a robotic timbre. “I’m just exploring the world of AI. Any stories catch your eye lately?”

I brought Fake Joe into existence after seeing an ad from a company called HeyGen, which is based in California and maintains an office in Toronto. (Earlier this year, it was valued at US$500-million.) The ad promised that you could create a digital avatar …