Fintech Klarna's CEO delivers quarterly results through his AI avatar
The video was published on the company’s YouTube channel on Monday, and featured a realistic digital version of Siemiatkowski delivering an update on the IPO-bound firm’s performance.
Stockholm-based , the buy-now-pay-later fintech company led by Sebastian Siemiatkowski, used an AI-generated avatar of its chief executive to present its latest quarterly earnings.
The video was published on the company’s YouTube channel on Monday and featured a realistic digital version of Siemiatkowski delivering an update on the IPO-bound firm’s performance.
The avatar closely resembled one of the CEO’s widely circulated corporate photos, with only minor signs, such as limited blinking and slightly imperfect voice sync, indicating it was AI-generated.
In its blog post, Klarna stated artificial intelligence drove its fourth consecutive profitable quarter, stating that AI tools enabled a ~40% reduction in workforce and pushed revenue per employee to nearly $1 million. The firm also cited AI as a key factor in reaching 100 million users.
More recently, Klarna announced plans to expand its human customer service team after previously replacing 700 roles with AI. According to Bloomberg, the company has launched a new hiring pilot in which customer service representatives will work remotely in a model similar to Uber’s.
Over time, these in-house workers are expected to replace the few thousand outsourced human agents currently employed by the firm.
Klarna’s use of an AI CEO avatar follows a growing trend of companies experimenting with AI leadership personas. Earlier this year, AI sales platform Artisan released a satirical video on April Fool’s Day announcing that its CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack had been replaced by an AI.
Edited by Kanishk Singh