As I was walking across the show floor before CES 2026 officially opened, a man stopped me with a smile and said, "Hey, I know you! I recognize you from your AI clone!"

CES, the world's biggest tech trade show, is full of weird, wonderful and futuristic tech. But there isn't anything quite like the MyPersona AI tech on display.

The man was Eric Vaughan, CEO of IgniteTech, the company behind MyPersona and builder of AI-powered digital twins. The service is exclusively designed for businesses and aims to help them expand access to employees who are subject matter experts in human resources, finance or tech support. The people in these roles are often inundated with time-consuming information requests, from "What's the policy on this?" to "How do I file this form?"

The idea is that AI clones could help ease their administrative burden. If an employee has a simple question, they can interact with the digital clone.

"The goal is not only to create an avatar itself and provide the information, but to create a digital twin of you, with your way of speaking, with your voice," said Vinicius Oliveria, customer success manager for IgniteTech. That way, the audience "can feel that they are talking with the subject matter experts." 

I set up my AI clone before arriving at CES (which is why Vaughan was able to recognize me in real life). The process was startlingly simple. I created a MyPersona account with my basic personal information. Then I added my expertise -- for me, that meant linking to my reporting on AI image and video generators. Companies can customize the information they choose to include with their digital clones.

Next comes the personalization part, which makes a huge difference in the appearance of your digital clone. MyPersona makes the setup easy, similar to a Zoom meeting. You record yourself speaking from a standard script, and the recording captures your facial expressions, voice, and any additional qualities you have while speaking, such as hand gestures, cadence and accent.

Talking with my clone was a much more human-like experience than typing with ChatGPT or Gemini. My voice and facial expressions were spot-on, which was as impressive as it was creepy, at least for me. More importantly, the MyPersona clone was able to accurately and quickly answer my questions. It captured the nuance of the complex field of creative AI, which I write about extensively and put into the clone's knowledge base. Limiting the knowledge the clone has also helps reduce the odds of the AI hallucinating, Vaughan said.

My colleague, Macy Meyer, was less spooked but equally impressed. Meyer said it was like looking at a GIF or a short video clip of me, but it didn't fully capture my expressions, mannerisms or personality. 

"It didn't know anything about Taylor Swift or her best songs," Meyer said. "So clearly it wasn't Katelyn." 

This is a key point of using these AI clones. They could be great sources of information, able to accurately assess and regurgitate information in their knowledge base. However, while they're certainly friendlier and more lifelike than chatbots, they don't possess full personalities. For one, I'm funnier in real life than in my AI clone form, and I'm always down to talk about Taylor Swift with my coworkers.

Also, I'm not sure I would want my colleagues or CNET readers to rely solely on my digital clone for information about AI. The tech changes so quickly that I would have to constantly update the clone. 

AI avatars also run the risk of further anthropomorphizing AI, which can be dangerous because AI isn't human. 

Still, I can see potential use cases where, with employees' consent, clones could be used to build up an organization's institutional knowledge and help alleviate administrative burden for some departments. 

Seeing myself as an AI clone was a frighteningly realistic reminder that AI is rapidly becoming central to our lives, whether we want it to or not.