When I decided to create artificial intelligence clones of my editors, my intentions were pure: I just wanted them to think I was good at my job.
AI assistants are suddenly everywhere in the workplace. Each week, my inbox is flooded with press releases about digital workers, and CEOs brag about how robot helpers will soon dominate their workforces. Then there are the stories I hear about people who build AI clones of their bosses, using them to spit-shine every idea, message, or draft before sending it over to their actual human supervisors. The goal seems to be productivity and optimization: If employees can cheaply and quickly improve their output, their job performance—and the performance of their employers—will be better for it.
I didn’t need my bots to improve Condé Nast’s bottom line. I just needed them to make me look good. I had only been reporting on the future of work at WIRED for a few months, and I reasoned that the bots could help me mold myself into an ideal colleague. They could help me navigate a new workplace and better understand my editors: what they liked, how they communicated, what success might look like to them.
What better way to figure out what the future of work might look like than actually living it?
Last month, when I broached my idea with those editors, Brian Barrett and Sophie Kleeman, they were less than enthused.
“Genuinely my nightmare,” Brian told me over Slack. “But will do it for the blog.”
It took less than 24 hours for Brian to realize just how much he would regret that decision.
A “Yes, and” Leadership Style
When I first embarked on my bot quest, I didn’t know that much about building AI tools. I decided I wouldn’t judge the bots’ editorial abilities too harshly, lest they be rooted in my own technological shortcomings. If the bots helped me become a slightly better coworker, I figured, that was good enough.
I used Gemini, because it’s Condé Nast’s AI platform of choice and I didn’t want to get fired. I created Brian Bot first—as my actual manager, he was the most important coworker to impress. I knew he lived in Alabama; that he used to work at Gizmodo; that he likes blogs. Gemini seemed confident it could fill in the other gaps based on Brian’s digital footprint, including new-hire announcements, podcast transcripts, and a public relations website that claimed Brian was an expert on New England weather. (I later found out that was a different Brian Barrett, and excluded it from my Brian Bot blueprint.) Gemini Notebook spit out a “Writing and Editing Style Guide,” a “Persona and Style Guide,” and an “Editorial Dossier”—all produced from the flesh-and-blood life of Brian Barrett.
It was passable at helping me pick headlines to pitch, but it wasn’t great at coming up with ideas for future articles. Its responses were also grating. It had picked up on a few Brian-isms—a love for parentheticals, for one—but they were negated by AI hallmarks like bolded subheadings and bulleted lists.
But mostly I was distracted by one “key theme”—his “‘Yes, and …’ Leadership Style.”
“His extensive background with the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) theatre in New York strongly shapes his collaborative, active-listening leadership approach,” Gemini said.
I immediately demanded to know whether this was true. (It was.)
“Pulling the plug on Brian Bot,” the real Brian responded. “Brian Bot canceled.”
But Brian Bot was just getting started. And it was unavoidably, unbelievably corny.
“We run like a well-oiled improv team,” Brian Bot told me when I asked for its favorite thing about WIRED. “We validate bold ideas, pivot rapidly, and deploy modular stories across platforms without losing structural rigor.”