Klarna’s CEO is now taking your calls — over an AI hotline

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has already used AI to replace himself during earnings reports, and now Klarna is using AI to clone him another way: through an AI-powered phone hotline.

The hotline is now open for users to provide feedback to an interactive AI version of Siemiatkowski that’s trained on his “real voice, insights, and experiences,” according to a press release. 

“Customers, including consumers and merchants alike, can speak to it about product features, issues and suggestions for improvements,” Klarna says. “‘AI Sebastian’ can also answer questions about Klarna’s vision and mission, and speak about its founding story and journey so far, based on learnings from ‘real life Sebastian.’”

After the hotline takes a call, a transcript and summary are generated that are “automatically analyzed by a large language model (LLM), populating an internal live feed and innovation dashboard.” Klarna says its product and engineering teams will then review the “actionable insights immediately” and assign “priority tasks.” The company claims that issues raised today could “translate into tangible product improvements already the following day.”

Phone numbers for the hotline are available now in the US, +14246675385, and Sweden, +46852512594. I called the US hotline just to see what the experience was like. After a brief message telling me the call may be recorded, the AI version of Siemiatkowski prompted me to share feedback about using Klarna. No matter what I asked AI Siemiatkowski, even sillier questions, the AI generally tried to push me back to sharing feedback.

When I asked if it had talked to Fortnite’s AI Darth Vader, for example, here’s what it said:

That’s an interesting question. My focus is entirely on Klarna and gathering feedback to improve our services. I don’t have information or conversations with characters from games like Fortnite. I’m here to hear your thoughts on Klarna. Is there anything else about your experience with Klarna that you’d like to share, or any ideas you have for how we could make things even better?

OpenAI also has a hotline to talk with an AI chatbot. You can call ChatGPT at 1-800-CHATGPT.