Imagine that your boss is too busy to show up at that meeting you called so she sends a bot of herself instead. With a digital twin, even your company's CEO - the one who spends all his time on the corporate jet - could make an appearance at your powwow about the break room coffee machine. But would you want them there?

Computer scientists have started to explore the possibility of AI bots that resemble actual corporate leaders in voice and/or appearance, based on the belief that managerial avatars might be tolerated or even worthwhile.

One group of researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Emory have now published their findings in a pre-print paper titled, "When Your Boss Is an AI Bot: Exploring Opportunities and Risks of Manager Clone Agents in the Future Workplace," scheduled to be presented at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in Barcelona next month.

To justify their study, the authors point to a handful of reports of bosses already "cloning themselves," by having a digital twin attend a conference call, for example.

They also note, "Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (NVIDIA, 2022) and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman (HeyGen, 2024) have released their AI avatars in public, while companies like Zoom (Peters, 2025) and Otter.ai (Boyle, 2025) pilot digital stand-ins for meetings and briefings."

After interviewing 23 managers and workers about speculative scenarios where manager clone agents might be useful, they've come up with several possible roles that might work – with some caveats.

"Our findings reveal a fundamental tension between the promise and risks of manager clone agents," the researchers report in the paper. "On the one hand, participants envisioned supportive roles, acting as proxy presences in meetings, conveying information across organizational layers, automating routine tasks, and amplifying managerial guidance."

At the same time, they say, delegating these roles to software creates risks. For one, managers and workers expressed anxiety about accountability and about being replaced – a  fear fanned by AI companies. 

Another concern was that interpersonal relations might suffer due to lack of trust, lack of authenticity, and reduced interpersonal contact. There was also worry about what AI agents might do to organizational cohesion – study participants fretted that efficiency gains might flatten corporate hierarchies and weaken organizational ties. And workers in the study expressed suspicion that AI bossware might just be an excuse to surveil them.

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The various scenarios explored with study participants underscored the importance of careful, thoughtful design and deployment of managerial doppelgangers, because both leaders and employees find the idea unsettling.

"Concerns centered on errors: agents misinterpreting intent, causing harmful outcomes, or introducing communication mistakes," the authors explain.

Like workers or creative professionals, managers don't want to be replaced by AI. Managers in the study defended their capacity for "higher-order decision-making, creative judgment, and relational work as difficult to automate," even though some acknowledged an AI clone might be able to take over a portion of their responsibilities.

One manager participating in the study made it clear that AI clones wouldn't be embraced with much enthusiasm, stating that "I probably don't want to authorize him because if my own work could be done by my agent, then what is this job position for me to do?"

The key to making AI clones workable appears to be framing their role as an assistant rather than a substitute.

Because this study explored speculative scenarios about the future, workers also imagined the possibility that AI boss clones could reduce the need for human leaders.

"W3 frankly admitted: 'If the inclusion of AI can diminish, or even overturn power structures like leader–worker dynamics, then as a worker I'm willing to support anything that can facilitate this transformation.' In such visions, the absence of managers is not a loss but a condition for greater happiness, with more room for individuals to exercise agency."

¡Viva la revolución de la IA! ®

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