Rowan Cheung of The Rundown AI runs an AI clone of his face and voice on Instagram. It passed 200,000 followers, and he never has to record.
Alex Lieberman had Pablo Motoa build an AI avatar for Tenex. It hit 18k followers and over 2 million views in a few months.
Dr. Viveta Lobo, a Stanford emergency medicine professor, went to 135K Instagram followers in 5 months of daily posting. She’s at 236K now. Her reels look like avatar-driven daily content, though she hasn’t said how she makes them.
Kwebbelkop went the other way. His AI channel has 1.26 million subscribers but only about 832k total views.
This is the first wave. A handful of founders worked out that a clone lets them post daily without ever sitting in front of a camera.
Most of the industry is still playing it safe. The people above are getting ahead while everyone else waits.
I’ve spent 4+ years editing podcasts and daily video. Below is how these accounts actually work, what goes wrong, and how to do it well.
Rowan Cheung’s setup
Rowan is a writer first. He’s said he isn’t great on camera.
In August 2024 he posted a video and said it was “a 100% AI clone of my face and voice.” He ran a 30 day test on Instagram.
On day 8, a video went viral on a basically fresh account. He said he “didn’t even log in until the weekend.”
By November 2024 he had 48.4k followers and over 7 million views. His screenshot shows single reels at 972K and 2.9M views.
In April 2025 he hit 100k. He said it 10x’d his content output.
By September 2025 he told Greg Isenberg on the Startup Ideas Podcast that it was over 150k.
How his videos get made
The core stack is HeyGen for the face and ElevenLabs for the voice. He adds Runway for b-roll and Ideogram for images with text.
His editor turns Rowan’s newsletter stories and posts into scripts with Claude. Then they generate the voice and the avatar.
He makes the voice separately in ElevenLabs. On the podcast he said that sounds better than HeyGen’s built in voice option.
After a first edit, they fix the avatar and do a final cut. He said they often regenerate it several times to get certain words right.
Tenex and Alex Lieberman
Alex cofounded Morning Brew. He now co-runs Tenex, an enterprise AI firm.
He made his first avatar in October 2024 with HeyGen and ElevenLabs. He listed the tells himself. They were a slightly high pitch, a stiff face, an odd eye movement and lips a little out of sync.
About a year later, Pablo Motoa’s team built a full avatar for him. In December 2025, Pablo posted the results. The account had 18k followers, over 2 million views, and thousands of newsletter subscribers and leads.
They used HeyGen, ElevenLabs, Higgsfield AI and Nano Banana Pro, according to Pablo’s LinkedIn post.
Alex quoted it with “How we generated 1.5m views on IG w/ fake me.”
Dr. Viveta Lobo
Dr. Lobo is an emergency medicine physician and a clinical professor at Stanford. Her bio says “Educational content only.”
In June 2026 she said five months of daily posting got her to 135K on Instagram, 102K on Facebook, 33K on TikTok and 14K on YouTube.
Her Instagram now shows 236K followers. Reels in her grid show 440K, 170K and 122K views.
The format is very consistent. A clip of a fitness figure sits on top, and her talking head explains it below. It looks like avatar-driven daily content. She hasn’t said publicly how the videos are made, so treat that as my read.
The one that flopped
Kwebbelkop is a gaming YouTuber. He built an AI clone of himself and gave it its own channel.
That channel has about 1.26 million subscribers, according to Social Blade. It has only around 832k total views across 117 videos.
His audience followed him for his personality. Gaming is personal content, and that’s the hardest kind for a clone to carry.
Avatars are hard to spot now
The tech has gotten really good.
A 2025 study in Scientific Reports tested ElevenLabs voice clones on 604 listeners. People judged the clone to be the same person as the real voice about 80% of the time. They correctly flagged a clone as AI only about 60% of the time.
Video still lags a bit behind voice. Rowan said so on the podcast.
His fix is to keep the face on screen for only the first 3 to 4 seconds. B-roll carries the rest. Short shots look real, and the voice does the heavy lifting.
Alex could list four tells in his 2024 avatar. A year later his avatar account was pulling millions of views.
The avatar won’t save a bad video
This is the part people skip.
Rowan said his team still spends hours on research, scripts and editing. His editor sometimes says it would be faster if Rowan just narrated it himself.
The avatar only replaces the recording. A good video still needs a strong script, a real story and sharp editing. A perfect clone reading a boring script still makes a boring video.
Every account above that worked started with good writing.
The concerns, one by one
It feels fake. That’s fair. The answer is to say it’s AI. Rowan disclosed it in every video, plus tags, captions and comments. Rowan said he got “near-zero backlash.”
Your audience might turn on you. This depends on the niche. Rowan is the AI guy, so people saw it as him practicing what he preaches. He said he wouldn’t do it as a public company CEO.
Uncanny valley. Keep face time short and lean on b-roll. Rowan’s 3 to 4 second rule covers most of it.
Platform labels and reach. Platforms keep adding AI labels. Label it yourself first, so a label never surprises your audience. I couldn’t find public data showing these accounts lost reach because of AI labels.
Likeness and legal. Only clone yourself. HeyGen requires a consent video from the person being cloned.
Misuse. This one’s real. A January 2026 Indicator report found more than two dozen fake AI “doctor” accounts with over 8.5 million followers combined. That’s why disclosure matters so much.
Content type matters a lot
The quality bar has to be high. And the format has to fit.
News, how-tos and explainers work best. In those, the information matters more than who delivers it.
Personal stories and emotional posts work much less well. People want the real you there.
Look at the winners. Rowan does AI news. Tenex does AI breakdowns. Dr. Lobo does health education. Kwebbelkop’s audience came for his personality.
Mix the clone with the real you
Don’t go 100% AI.
Rowan said early on that he planned to post real videos between the clone posts. On the podcast he said he’d started narrating some himself once he had a studio.
Let the clone handle the daily news and info. Show up yourself every so often for the personal stuff.
The mix keeps trust high. It also makes the two harder to tell apart.
Why tech founders should move first
Tech audiences already know what HeyGen and ElevenLabs are. They’re primed to accept an avatar if you’re open about it.
Rowan found that people outside the X AI bubble know much less about AI news. Day old stories can still go viral there. That’s a lot of untapped reach.
Most founders are still playing it safe. The ones who start now get the head start.
TL;DR
Founders are already growing big audiences with AI clones.
Rowan Cheung passed 200k Instagram followers, and Tenex hit 2M+ views in a few months.
Clones are now hard to tell apart, especially by voice.
You still need a strong script, a story and real editing.
News and info content works best.
Disclose it, and mix in real videos.
Tech founders have the most open audience, so they should move first.
Common questions
Do AI clone accounts actually grow?
Some do. Rowan Cheung's AI clone account on Instagram passed 200,000 followers, and the avatar account Pablo Motoa's team built for Tenex reached 18,000 followers and over 2 million views in a few months.
Should you tell your audience it's an AI clone?
Yes. Rowan Cheung disclosed it in every video, plus tags, captions and comments, and reported near-zero backlash. Labelling it yourself also means a platform label never surprises your audience.
What kind of content works best for an AI clone?
News, how-tos and explainers, where the information matters more than who delivers it. Personal stories and emotional posts work much less well.