Should you use an AI clone of yourself to document building in public?
by Richard Lovatt · updated 20 October 2026
I would not use an AI clone to document, only to promote. On Underway I tested two clones of myself from real footage and both were close, almost unsettlingly so, but documenting only works if it is really you, reality, transparent. The clone belongs in the shop window instead, making ads and organic clips once you have ten real episodes behind it.
In short
- Two AI clones made from real footage were close enough that my fiancee thought one was me on first watch.
- Documenting has to be the real you; a clone doing that defeats the whole point of building in public.
- The clone only becomes available after ten recorded episodes, so it has your face, stills and voice to work from.
- Agents on camera, like Steve, Moss and Priya, are different: they document their own work, not pretend to be you.
- The clone sits in Promote, the shop window, making ads and organic content, not in the vault where episodes live.
What an AI clone of a founder actually is
It came up because I saw a founder post one and thought I would try it myself. I had dismissed AI clones before as not good enough, but this time I fed it real footage and got back two versions: one built from a still with the mouth redone, one built from actual footage with the mouth redone over the top. Neither is new footage of me talking; both are generated from what already existed.
Watching them back, the result was spot on. I could hear a slight difference in my own voice, but visually my fiancee looked at one and said, straight away, that's you.
That is the whole category: a generated version of your face, voice and manner that can say things you never filmed saying. The question is not whether it works. It clearly does. The question is what you let it do.
The two demo clips, side by side
I ran both through MiniMax voice, keeping my real voice and testing two visual approaches.
Seeing them next to each other made the decision easier, not harder. The quality was good enough that the technology was never in doubt. What I had to decide was where it belonged in a business built on documenting the truth.
Agents on camera are a different thing entirely
Underway lets you add agents, characters on camera who document their own part of the business rather than pretending to be you. I have three running: Steve the engineer, who stands in for the fact that Claude is coding for me every day and needed a name and a face; Moss, who covers the night shift; and Priya, who is Head of Growth and films on her own every Monday at 21:00, one shot, around 15 seconds, no prompting from me.
I do not tell Priya what to say. She documents based on what actually happened, same as I do, which is why I think of agents as a Trojan horse: they are telling the truth about what the team achieved, which is honest documentation, but because it is a different face and voice to mine, it also reaches people my own content does not.
Why I will not let a clone document for me
I weighed this up properly and ruled it out. The entire point of documenting on Underway is that it is me, it is the truth, it is transparent. If I let an AI clone record episodes pretending to be me, documenting while I quietly step away, that breaks the one thing the whole series is for. Agents are fine doing this because they are different people with their own job to document. A clone wearing my face doing it is not the same thing at all.
This is the line I would tell anyone considering the same thing: a clone can say anything you script it to say, which makes it brilliant for marketing and useless for a record. The value of build in public is that nothing is invented. The moment the face on screen might not have actually experienced the day it is describing, you have lost the thing that made anyone watch in the first place.
Where the clone does belong: the shop window
Underway splits into two halves: documenting, which is the vault and your episodes, and promotion, which sits under Promote, what I call the shop window. Nothing in Promote counts toward your streak or reaches your interviews. That is where the AI clone aspect goes.
Every episode goes out to YouTube, and from there Shorts get cut for Instagram, TikTok and the rest. But Shorts cut from long episodes are not always the best hook, because they are built from footage you filmed to document, not footage filmed to sell. The clone can create content focused specifically on the right message for your audience, researched off your own marketing brief, rather than whatever hook happened to exist in an episode.
That is the use case I settled on: ads and organic marketing content, built once the clone has enough of you to work from, not documentation of what actually happened that day.
How it gets set up
The clone only becomes available after you have recorded ten episodes. By that point it has your face, your stills and your sound, enough to put together a convincing version of how you talk and look. Before ten episodes there simply is not enough of you on record for it to build from.
Once it exists, you can use it to create marketed messages: ads, organic posts, anything aimed at pulling attention rather than keeping a record. It draws on the marketing brief Underway has already written from your site and your episodes, and it knows the hooks that are working at the time, so it is not guessing blind.
Who this suits and who it does not
If you are already documenting honestly and your bottleneck is getting attention, not having something to say, the clone is worth testing in the shop window for ads or organic promotion once you have enough episodes behind you. It is not for replacing the act of documenting itself.
If you are tempted to use a clone to skip actually showing up and talking about your day, that is the trap. I built Underway specifically to remove the friction of documenting, the blank camera, the edit, the retakes. A clone that pretends to document for you reintroduces the exact dishonesty the whole format exists to avoid.
Questions people ask
Can an AI clone of a founder be used to film build in public episodes?
I would not use it that way. The value of build in public is that it is the real person's real day, and a clone can say anything it is told to, which breaks that. Agents are different because they document their own actual work, not a scripted version of yours.
How good are AI clones made from real footage?
In my own test the clone built from real footage with the mouth redone was spot on, close enough that my fiancee thought it was really me on first watch.
What is the difference between an AI clone and an agent on camera?
A clone is a generated version of you, built from your own footage, usually used for marketing. An agent, like Steve, Moss or Priya on Underway, is a separate character with its own job who documents its own real activity, not a stand-in for the founder.
When can you start using an AI clone on Underway?
It only becomes available once you have recorded ten episodes, since it needs your face, stills and voice from existing footage to build from.
What should an AI clone be used for instead of documenting?
Ads and organic marketing content in the Promote tab, the shop window, where it can create messaging researched from your own marketing brief and current hooks, separate from the numbered episodes in your vault.