Company cloned ex‑worker with AI
A Chinese firm reportedly trained an AI 'clone' on an HR employee’s work data and used it to handle routine tasks after he resigned. (moneycontrol.com) Coverage says the episode has prompted debate in China about consent, privacy and what automation means for post‑resignation work arrangements. (moneycontrol.com)
A game company in China reportedly built an artificial intelligence version of a former human resources worker and kept it doing routine office tasks after the employee left. (scmp.com) The company is in Shandong province, and the digital worker was trained on the former staffer’s chat logs, work documents and job habits, according to reports cited by Shanghai Daily and South China Morning Post. (shanghaidaily.com) The avatar now answers basic human resources questions, drafts meeting invitations and produces spreadsheets and presentation files, while colleagues described it as able to follow only simple instructions. (citynewsservice.cn) Reports said the former employee consented to the experiment, and a company staff member said the system is being tested internally rather than deployed for outside use. (scmp.com) The case landed as Chinese tech circles were already talking about a “skill craze” built around tools that try to turn a worker’s messages, documents and habits into a reusable software profile. (shanghaidaily.com) Shanghai Daily traced that wave to a GitHub project called `colleague.skill`, published on March 30 by a developer using the handle “titanwings.” The pitch was to feed workplace records from apps such as Feishu, DingTalk and WeChat into an artificial intelligence system to recreate how a colleague works and communicates. (shanghaidaily.com) Within five days, Shanghai Daily said, that repository had passed 10,000 GitHub stars and spread from GitHub to Weibo, Zhihu and RedNote, turning an office experiment into a wider online argument. (citynewsservice.cn) Chinese privacy law already gives this debate a legal frame. China’s Personal Information Protection Law took effect on November 1, 2021, and it regulates the processing of personal information, while other rules that took effect on January 10, 2023 target “deep synthesis” systems that can generate or imitate people and content. (china-briefing.com) (loc.gov) South China Morning Post quoted Fu Jian, director of Henan Zejin Law Firm, saying chat records, work emails and personal work habits can count as personal information, and some private communications may qualify as sensitive personal data under Chinese law. (scmp.com) For now, the reported clone is still doing low-level office work, but the company employee who described the test said management wants to explore humanoid robot staff for reception, guidance and scheduling next. (scmp.com)
