Building the clone itself is the quick part, and most of the real work comes afterwards in writing and editing the videos it appears in. These are the steps the founders with the most successful clone accounts follow, with the tools they have said they use.
1. Record clean footage of yourself
Everything starts with footage of you talking to camera, because both the face and the voice are trained on it. Film in a quiet room with steady, soft light, look into the lens and talk the way you would on a call rather than reading a script, since the clone picks up your natural rhythm and expressions from this recording.
Most avatar tools also ask for a short consent recording. HeyGen, for example, requires a consent video from the person being cloned, which confirms the clone is of you and made with your permission.
2. Build the voice clone
The voice does more of the work than people expect, so it is worth building it carefully. Rowan Cheung makes his voice separately in ElevenLabs and has said on the Startup Ideas Podcast that it sounds better than the voice option built into his video tool.
Voice clones have become very convincing. In a 2025 study in Scientific Reports, listeners judged an ElevenLabs clone to be the same person as the real voice about 80% of the time.
3. Build the video avatar
Next, the footage goes into a video avatar tool. Rowan uses HeyGen for the face, and the team that built Alex Lieberman’s avatar for Tenex used HeyGen and ElevenLabs together with Higgsfield AI and Nano Banana Pro.
Before you use the clone for anything public, watch a few test videos closely. Alex listed the giveaways in his first avatar himself: a slightly high pitch, a stiff face, odd eye movement and lips a little out of sync. Those are the things to check and fix before you post.
4. Write scripts from your own material
The clone can only say what you give it, so the scripts decide whether the videos are any good. Rowan’s editor turns his newsletter stories and posts into scripts with Claude, which keeps the videos in his voice and grounded in ideas he has already written about.
Rowan has said his team still spends hours on research, scripts and editing for each video. A perfect clone reading a boring script still makes a boring video, so this is where most of the effort should go.
5. Edit each video properly
Raw avatar output rarely looks good on its own. Rowan adds Runway for B-roll and Ideogram for images with text, and keeps the clone’s face on screen for only the first 3 to 4 seconds before letting B-roll carry the rest. He has also said his team often regenerates a clip several times to get certain words right.
Captions, music and sound design matter as much here as they do for any short-form video, because they decide whether people keep watching past the first few seconds.
6. Label it and post
Say plainly that the video uses an AI clone. Rowan disclosed it in every video, plus tags, captions and comments, and reported near-zero backlash. Platforms keep adding their own AI labels too, so labelling it yourself first means a platform label never surprises your audience.
News, how-tos and explainers are the formats that work best, because the information matters more than who delivers it. Personal stories land much better when you record them yourself.
7. Keep showing up as yourself
The accounts that hold trust mix clone videos with real ones. Rowan said early on that he planned to post real videos between the clone posts, and later started narrating some himself once he had a studio. Let the clone handle the regular news and explainer posts, and record the personal moments in person.
If you’d rather not run it yourself
Every step after the first recording takes ongoing time each week, which is why many founders hand it off. HYVID builds your clone from one 30-minute recording and then scripts, edits and posts the videos for you, and you approve as much or as little as you want.
Common questions
What tools do people use to make an AI clone?
The most common setup is HeyGen for the video avatar and ElevenLabs for the voice. Rowan Cheung adds Runway for B-roll and Ideogram for images with text.
Do I need permission to clone myself?
You are giving permission for yourself, and tools like HeyGen ask you to record a consent video confirming it. You should never clone someone else without their consent.
How do I stop an AI clone looking fake?
Keep the clone's face on screen in short beats and let B-roll carry the rest. Rowan Cheung shows his clone for the first 3 to 4 seconds of a video and then cuts away.