How do you clone yourself with AI from three phone recordings?
by Richard Lovatt · updated 24 October 2026
You film three short clips on your phone, sat talking, up close, and walking around, and Underway builds an AI clone of your face and voice from them in around five minutes. From there it writes and films 12 to 15 second ads in your voice, using your own episodes as the script source, so you can approve or reject each one before it goes out.
In short
- Three recordings, about thirty seconds each, sat talking, up close, and walking, are all the footage the clone is built from.
- Building the clone itself takes about five minutes and you can leave the page while it works.
- You can record your voice separately if you are not happy with it; otherwise it defaults to the voice already learned from your episodes.
- Early attempts can come out wrong in the face or the pacing; re-recording the three clips and building again is how you fix it.
- The point is not a perfect likeness, it is a clone that can go out and make ads so you are not the one doing that work.
Training your AI clone
The way I set this up on Underway is with three short recordings, about thirty seconds each: one sat down talking to the camera about my work, one held up close to my face like I'm leaving a voice note, and one walking round the room with my phone held at eye level, talking as I go. Good light and the camera at eye level matter, because the clone copies exactly how you look in these three clips.
You can record your voice at the same time, or turn that off. I turned it off on one pass because Underway already had plenty of my voice from the episodes I'd already recorded, and it will default to that if you've built up enough footage elsewhere. If you're starting from nothing, record the voice too.
Once the three are saved, you press Build it again and it goes off to construct the model. It took about five minutes when I did it. You can leave the page and it carries on without you; your face for each kind of shot comes from the recording filmed that way, and your voice is cloned from the same three clips unless you've told it to use your existing voice.
Why my earlier clones came out wrong
Word on the street is when people try to make an AI clone it never comes out quite right, and I got frustrated with it too. The prompting behind Underway's version is something I spent a long time on, going round and round for a whole day to get it to a point I was happy with.
I kept the earlier attempts and played them back to show the difference. One had my face right but the pacing was off at the end, where the script closed with the website address and the rhythm went strange. Another was off specifically in the face, not quite right even though the rest was fine. One, honestly, made me look like Bugs Bunny.
None of that means you throw the attempt away. Each one got me closer, and the fix each time was the same: go back to Record them again, re-shoot whichever of the three recordings was causing the problem, and build it again. If the issue is the face, re-record the still shots. If it's the voice, record the voice separately. You don't need to start the whole thing over.
Building the model from shoes up
When you press build, you get a working screen with a progress readout, and it genuinely builds the figure from the ground up on screen: it was sitting at Building shoes, then Building legs, while mine were rendering. It's a strange thing to watch but it tells you where it's at rather than leaving you guessing.
It said about five minutes, which is usually sooner than that in practice. The page lists what's happening as it goes: your face for each kind of shot comes from the recording filmed that way, your voice is cloned from these recordings too, and when it's ready, Make a video films your first one automatically.
Opening your AI clone and approving a video
The clone lives under Promote, in Your AI Clone. That's deliberate: the whole point of having one is to promote the business while you do nothing, sitting on the sofa while it goes out and markets for you. Open it and if you've already set one up, there will be a video waiting for you to approve, filmed from a script it picked or wrote.
I watched mine back and was genuinely happy with it. The pacing at the end was a little off, it ends on the website address a bit abruptly, but it still does exactly what I want an AI clone to do. I said at the time I'd put that one out on ad after ad after ad, because the public watching an ad doesn't know it isn't quite the real thing, and it still reads as realistic.
From that screen you've got three choices on any video: Approve it, which puts it on your page and from there you can post it to your socials; Make another, if you want a different take on the same script; or Not this one, if you want to drop it entirely.
Letting the clone sell for you
The reason to go through any of this isn't the novelty of seeing yourself cloned, it's what it does once it's built. Most people who own a business find the selling part, the marketing part, the actually-going-out-and-doing-it part, the hard bit, even if they understand it in theory and are fine on camera. Creating content, ads, hooks, a library of clips, editing it together, all of that is strenuous even when you can do it.
Underway's clone isn't just reading a script you wrote. It researches the market you're in, looks at what's working in your niche on Meta, and writes ads from that research, in your face and your voice, made from your own episodes. Then it films them. Every ad I've seen come out of it carries the label that it's AI wherever it gets posted.
Setting one up, you pick an ad idea, for example a line like Documenting your build isn't a feed, it's a show, choose which of your recorded looks to use (lighting matters here, one of mine was too uneven and I'd go back and re-record it), and it shows you the script before filming. Mine read: Documenting your build isn't a feed, it's a show. Feeds reward the hook, you burn out chasing one. Nothing rewarded, nothing invented. No words you didn't say. Start your show, underway.life.
What it costs in time and money
The three recordings take about thirty seconds each to film, so a few minutes of your time at most, plus however long you spend getting the light and the framing right. Building the model from those recordings took about five minutes for me, and you don't need to sit and watch it; the page carries on without you.
Once built, there's no limit stated on my account for how many videos I can make from it, with a top-up option of five videos for $99 if you're on a plan that caps them.
Who this suits and who it does not
If you're building something and the thought of being the one who scripts, films, lights and edits every ad is what's stopping you from marketing at all, this is built for exactly that gap. I built it because I kept finding the actual act of making the ads harder than understanding what I needed to say in them.
It suits anyone already recording their work somewhere, because the clone draws on your tone and your episodes rather than starting from a blank page. It doesn't suit someone looking for a flawless, indistinguishable replica of themselves; mine has had an off face, an odd pace, a Bugs Bunny moment, and I still run the ones I'm happy with as real ads, because to the public watching, it reads as realistic enough to do the job.
Questions people ask
How long does it take to build an AI clone on Underway?
The three recordings take about thirty seconds each. Building the model from them took about five minutes for me, though it can be sooner, and you can leave the page while it works.
Do I need to record my voice separately from my face?
You can. If you've already recorded enough episodes, Underway can use the voice it already has and you turn off the voice recording for the three clips, keeping only the picture. If not, record the voice alongside the three short clips.
What if the clone's face or pacing comes out wrong?
Go back to Record them again and reshoot whichever of the three recordings is causing the problem, then build it again. I've had one off in the face and one with odd pacing at the end, and both were fixed by re-recording and rebuilding rather than starting over.
What does the clone actually do once it's built?
It researches your market on Meta and writes 12 to 15 second ads in your face and voice, made from your own episodes, which you can then approve, ask it to make another version of, or reject outright before anything posts.
Is it obvious that the videos are AI?
Underway labels them as AI wherever they're posted. In my own experience the public watching an ad doesn't register that it isn't quite the real footage, and it still reads as realistic.
How many clone videos can I make?
On my account there was no stated limit, with a top-up of five videos for $99 available if your plan has a cap.