Bank chief lets AI double-handle earnings call amid Mark Zuckerberg’s digital twin push

Meet the AI clone that fooled analysts

Ever sat through a boring earnings call and wished the CEO would just get to the point? Customers Bank CEO Sam Sidhu took things much further during the bank’s April 2026 earnings call, when he revealed that his prepared remarks had been delivered by an AI clone.

For roughly the first 30 minutes, analysts were listening to the AI version before Sidhu disclosed what had happened. He described the moment as a live demonstration of the bank’s AI strategy, though PLAYSTUDIOS had already used an AI-generated earnings presentation in 2023.

Why a CEO sent a robot twin to work

Sam Sidhu didn’t pull this stunt just for laughs. He wanted everyone to know that AI isn’t a side project at Customers Bank. It’s the main event. The bank has a multi-year deal with OpenAI to rebuild how lending and onboarding work.

Sidhu believes showing his own AI clone proves they’re serious. If the CEO can be replaced for half a call, no job is off limits for automation. He calls it removing the tedious work so humans can focus on smarter tasks.

Customers bank’s big OpenAI partnership

This isn’t just about a clone voice. Customers Bank signed a real partnership with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Engineers from OpenAI will embed inside the bank to build AI agents that handle loans, payments, and client sign-ups.

The goal? Turn a 45-day commercial loan into a one-week process. Open a complex business account in under 20 minutes instead of a full day. Sidhu says these digital workers never sleep.

From 45 days to one week for loans

Waiting over a month for a business loan can be painful. Customers Bank says its OpenAI-backed workflow could reduce the time needed to close a commercial loan from 30 to 45 days to roughly seven days.

The bank says AI will help with tasks such as document collection, credit memoranda, legal documents, and portfolio monitoring. That speed could give regional banks a stronger competitive edge and help business owners move faster when financing is approved.

Digital workers that never take breaks

Imagine an employee who works 24/7, never asks for a raise, and never sleeps. That is the idea behind the “digital workers” Sidhu described. These AI agents are meant to handle repetitive tasks such as document collection, verification, and follow-ups more continuously than traditional workflows.

Sidhu says autonomous agents can work around the clock, which could make banking processes faster and more consistent for customers.

AI already saved 28000 work hours

Customers Bank isn’t waiting for the future. It’s already using AI to write about half of its internal software code. That saved roughly 28,000 hours of human work. Sidhu says that’s like not having to hire 15 full-time employees.

He sees this as a chance to grow without adding many new people. More revenue per worker, fewer slow hires. That’s good for profits, but it also raises a quiet question: what happens to the jobs that AI just absorbs?

Mark Zuckerberg has his own AI twin

Sam Sidhu is not the only executive linked to the AI-clone trend. Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, is reportedly developing an AI version of Mark Zuckerberg that could interact with employees and provide feedback.

Reports say the AI version is being trained on Zuckerberg’s image, voice, tone, mannerisms, public statements, and thinking on company strategy. Zuckerberg also told investors that 2026 is going to be the year AI starts to dramatically change the way people work.

Fun fact: The AI clone is being trained on Zuckerberg‘s personal mannerisms, vocal patterns, physical likeness, and his latest private thoughts on company strategy.

Klarna’s CEO sent an AI to earnings

In May 2025, Klarna used an AI version of CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski in a video about the company’s first-quarter earnings. The avatar clearly identified itself as an AI avatar before delivering Klarna’s Q1 highlights.

Klarna is a buy now, pay later company, and it has been open about using AI to run more efficiently. Siemiatkowski has said he expects the company’s workforce to fall from about 3,000 employees to fewer than 2,000 by 2030, largely through continued automation and attrition.

Zoom’s boss wants to go to the beach

Eric Yuan, the CEO of Zoom, has also experimented with an AI version of himself. In May 2025, he used a Zoom Custom Avatar to deliver part of the company’s fiscal first-quarter 2026 earnings call.

His bigger vision goes beyond earnings updates. In a 2024 interview, Yuan said he wants workers to have digital versions of themselves that can help with meetings, emails, phone calls, and other routine tasks. He joked that he could send a digital version of himself to a meeting so he could go to the beach.

This actually happened before in 2023

Sidhu framed his AI-clone reveal as a possible first for a public-company earnings call, but PLAYSTUDIOS had already made a similar move in May 2023. The company used generative AI to construct the script and voice cloning to deliver executive remarks for its first-quarter financial results presentation.

PLAYSTUDIOS CEO Andrew Pascal later said only a small group knew about the plan in advance, and Fast Company reported that the SEC was not aware of it beforehand. Sidhu’s move still fits a growing trend: CEOs are using AI avatars and voice clones to show how far workplace automation has moved.

Will AI kill jobs? Experts say relax

Every time a CEO shows off an AI clone, people worry about losing their jobs. But big research firms like Goldman Sachs and Forrester say the panic might be overblown. Goldman thinks that if AI were used for everything it could currently do, only about 2.5% of U.S. jobs would truly be at risk.

The future of work will remain largely human, according to Forrester. AI will change tasks, not eliminate whole careers.

Fun fact: Forrester predicts 6.1% of U.S. jobs will be lost to AI by 2030. That’s about 10.4 million roles, similar in scale to the 8.7 million jobs lost during the Great Recession.

Who’s responsible when AI messes up?

Here’s a tricky question. If an AI clone gives bad advice or an AI agent approves a loan it shouldn’t, who pays the price? In banking, the company using the technology still has to manage legal, compliance, and consumer-protection obligations.

Regulators are updating guidance and warning banks to manage model risk, vendor risk, data governance, explainability, and customer harm. The harder part is that generative and agentic AI are moving faster than many traditional supervisory frameworks, so banks need strong human oversight before letting AI handle high-stakes decisions.

Want to see how other tech giants are racing to shape the AI future, too? Take a look at Google’s $750 million push to commercialize AI; it adds more context to where things are headed.

The future, your boss might be a bot

So what’s next? More CEOs will send AI doubles to meetings, earnings calls, and maybe even interviews. Sidhu’s stunt shows that AI clones aren’t science fiction anymore. They’re real, and they’re already working inside big companies.

You might soon join a team meeting where your manager is an avatar trained to sound just like the real person. It’s weird, but it’s coming. The key is to stay curious, not scared. Learn how AI works. That way, you can work alongside the bots instead of being replaced by them.

Want to see how other tech leaders are trying to reshape the future, too? Take a look at Zuckerberg’s latest move against Google’s core business; it’s part of the same bigger shift.

Which AI clone trick surprised you the most, Sam Sidhu’s, Mark Zuckerberg’s, or Zoom’s beach-loving boss? Drop a comment below and hit like if you enjoyed this slideshow.

This slideshow was made with AI assistance and human editing.

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