A bank CEO admitted to using an AI clone to host a conference call, but no one realized it wasn’t him until he revealed it nearly an hour into the meeting.
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The incident was revealed recent interviewsthe tech and corporate world is buzzing, which was probably intended as a stunt. Sam Sidhu, CEO of Customers Bank, described the AI system as a real-time voice and language model trained to mimic his speech and decision-making, and also respond to follow-up questions with consistency and nuance.
He framed the stunt as a test of the AI’s abilities, saying,a little prank” but also a demonstration of how automation can streamline high-level communication. The AI version of the CEO performed so convincingly that investors and stakeholders never doubted that the CEO was not the real person on the phone. Notably, Customers Bank signed a deal with OpenAI last week that allows the AI company to integrate its AI agents into the banking giant.
For some, this is more than just a quirky CEO experiment. This is a glimpse into a future where AI handles corporate communications, board meetings, and investor presentations. As AI voice cloning becomes more available, the lines between humans and machines will blur, but at the cost of privacy and significantly increasing the risk of abuse. For example, deepfakes and synthetic media are already a headache for security and trust. Now imagine the problem being amplified by the interests of some at the highest echelons of the business.
If AI can make phone calls on behalf of the CEO, what’s stopping it from making business decisions? Or maybe even leading the entire company as CEO? Or perhaps a board of directors made up of a council of AI agents? The possibilities seem endless in the world of AI.
