Digital Replicas Will Loosen Work’s Iron Grip on Our Personal LivesDigital Replicas Will Loosen Work’s Iron Grip on Our Personal Lives

AI-powered bots could enable workers to enjoy their time away from their desks without work playing on their minds

Dan Thomson, Founder of Sensay

October 31, 2024

3 Min Read
A cartoon of a  woman in front of a screen with a robot popping out
Getty Images

For decades, work has been slowly creeping into every facet of our personal lives. The fine line between work and life has blurred beyond recognition and 'switching off' has become a task of monumental effort rather than a simple step in our daily routine.

This inability to switch off from “work mode” has reached almost epidemic levels. A third of people globally say they experience a fear of switching off. It's even something that the new Labour government has picked up on, with their proposed right-to-switch-off policy.

Ever since generative AI exploded into the mainstream media, there's been speculation over the impact it'll have on the way we work. There's been concern that the use of AI could lead to job losses, with workers replaced by bots. But with the responsible implementation of AI, the automation of working processes stands to be more a boon than a bane for employees.

Case in point: digital replicas. Capable of answering emails or completing administrative tasks outside of working hours, these AI-powered bots will shoulder the burden of work inquiries and small tasks in the evenings or during annual leave, enabling workers to enjoy their time away from their desks without work playing on their minds. 

I've experienced the benefits of this new strand of technology firsthand. A couple of years ago, I decided I'd had enough of constant email answering. I handed the administrative reins to my digital clone – and it's completely changed the way I work. 

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My digital clone – a chatbot-style AI avatar trained off my personal data – is capable of talking to anyone via text or live video. With live access to my emails, Zoom calls, Word documents, slack messages and so on, it can answer questions and propose solutions in exactly the same way I would. Its text-to-speech feature imitates my voice and its visual likeness is an animated image of myself, whilst its writing tone of voice is an authentic imitation of my own.

The impact that digital clones could have on our attitude to work stretches far further than any proposed work/life policies. Just because you have a right to switch off, doesn't mean you actually will. But knowing that you're sharing the workload with an AI assistant will grant you the peace of mind to take a step back from work and enjoy your time off fully.

There will be no pile of emails in your inbox for you to trough through on Monday morning because your digital replica will have answered some of them for you. You won't need to urgently send over a document from your work laptop because your digital replica will be capable of doing exactly that.

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Used as assistants – and not as a replacement for people – digital clones have the potential to loosen work's grip on our personal lives, one email at a time.

About the Author

Dan Thomson

Founder of Sensay, Sensay

Dan Thomson is the founder of Sensay, a leading platform for the creation of AI-based digital clones and a pioneer in digital immortality. He founded Sensay in 2023 to create solutions across a range of sectors, from healthcare to education, building a knowledge capture and share platform for the betterment of humanity. Before founding Sensay, Dan worked in several corporate and C-suite roles in the technology and web3 industry. He served as chief marketing officer (CMO), then strategic advisor at MetaRisk, a blockchain-enhanced risk financing firm and director of business development at InsurAce, a decentralized insurance protocol.

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