Have you ever met someone really good at what they do and wished there were 10 clones of them? You might have seen clones of characters across movies and TV shows. In 2025 and beyond, can we get to some version of that?
You’ve heard of Google DeepMind – the AI research lab – right? In late 2024, it was announced that DeepMind developed an AI system that may be capable of creating digital replicas of human personalities. These are called “personality agents” and they may be pretty interesting. How does something like this even come along? It’s said that there’s a 2-hour interview with a human where their responses are analyzed and based on that, models are constructed that mimic the human thought process and reactions of that respondent with an accuracy of about 85%.
All the nuances of your preferences, the way you speak, the way you judge – all of that would be used to meticulously build your personality profile. Remember those conspiracy theories of machines replacing you? Those were so silly and bizarre.
Sound dystopian yet? DeepMind may be looking at this as a tool for social research. “Hey, let’s use AI to create a scalable and cost-effective way to study and understand human behaviour”
It’s said that traditional sociology needs a lot of surveys and interviews that take a lot of time and demand a lot of financial resources. Not everyone can fill that free survey link that pops up on WhatsApp groups or Instagram Stories. So, all of this is for sociology majors? We’re devoting major AI resources for sociology folks? The conservatives in the US will not stand for this and they’re not going to take it anymore.
Nonetheless, the idea may be to simulate responses to different scenarios without the logistics of recruiting thousands of participants. Marketing folks may like that. So may a couple of academic folks studying psychology and sociology. Everyone wants to understand human behaviour better. Maybe, people can sell their AI personalities to these factions for a fair price and won’t have to undergo protracted surveys. Maybe, there’s a win-win here.
Or beyond sociology, maybe, each consumer using a platform could get an AI-generated personality that could adapt to their needs or anticipate their preferences. Your AI-powered customer bot? It knows exactly what you’re going through and knows the resolution you want. An assistant that can predict your needs before you articulate them. You might even get a bit spoiled by this. Interestingly, something, like this, might actually push the human-robot interaction equation further. These robots may understand social cues better and be trained over time to be more empathetic, even though those won’t be real emotions, but close enough.
What could something like this mean for India? Would it align with the DPDP Act 2023 to allow for personalities to be cloned and duplicated this way? Maybe, the EdTech sector would want something like this. You know, that one teacher you had for that obscure subject that never really had relevant life skills? Imagine if they taught you everything else. Now, they may be able to. Or maybe, that fantastic private tutor may go back to education just for the elite by charging super high prices for their AI clone. Maybe, a really great therapist could help out, but maybe, people wouldn’t want to get a mental health checkup from a bot. Or 10 years down the line, maybe, that’s the norm.
Of course, the risk of deepfakes probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Even if people charge money for others to use their AI clones, disinformation could be spread. So, maybe, India might not be overtly receptive to what DeepMind has to offer, but only time will tell.
What do you think your AI clone says about you?
