This HR company tried to treat AI bots like people — it didn’t go over well

“Today Lattice is making AI history,” CEO Sarah Franklin wrote in a July 9th blog post. “We will be the first to give digital workers official employee records in Lattice. Digital workers will be securely onboarded, trained, and assigned goals, performance metrics, appropriate systems access, and even a manager. Just as any person would be.”

On July 12th, after a very predictable backlash, Lattice posted an update saying it “will not further pursue digital workers in the product.”

Here’s a sample of the responses to Lattice’s original announcement:

Franklin’s original post did acknowledge that there are questions about what it means to integrate an AI worker into processes for managing real people. And Franklin has posted comments on LinkedIn to explain Lattice’s thinking about the feature. “I’m not advocating for the personification of AI,” Franklin said in one.

There are many companies exploring the idea of digital workers — Franklin’s blog post pointed to Cognition AI’s Devin software engineer and Qualified’s Piper AI sales representative. It appears Lattice was trying to respond to these sorts of AI bots, but its attempt backfired, especially among the people who might care about it the most.

Lattice didn’t reply to a request for comment.