A San Francisco HR software startup has backed down on plans to backed off plans to treat AI "digital workers" like employees by giving them employee records and adding them to org charts, a company spokesperson said.
Lattice drew ire on social media and from other startup founders by calling AI "digital workers" and offering to give the computer programs employee records and adding them to org charts.
"The team has been considering the feedback we have received and will not be moving forward with digital worker functionality in the product," a Lattice spokesperson wrote in an email.
The startup, co-founded by Jack Altman, who is the brother of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, builds HR software to help companies keep track of employees and give performance reviews.
The move, touted as historic by CEO Sarah Franklin on a post on LinkedIn, was meant to enable AI agents to be added to Lattice's records and treated as employees, including receiving performance reviews and gaining standing in the company's hierarchy.
"Within Lattice's people platform, 'digital workers' will be securely onboarded, trained, and assigned goals, performance metrics, appropriate systems access, and even an accountable manager," wrote Franklin on LinkedIn. "We know this process will raise a lot of questions and we don’t yet have all the answers, but we want to help our customers find them."
The announcement was almost universally panned in the comments of the post.
"This strategy and messaging misses the mark in a big way, and I say that as someone building an AI company," replied Sawyer Middeleer, chief of staff at Aomni. "Treating AI agents as employees disrespects the humanity of your real employees. Worse, it implies that you view humans simply as "resources" to be optimized and measured against machines."
Criticism of the post also appeared on X, where founders and CEOs of other HR tech and AI startups weighed on Lattice's treatment of AI as employees.
"So, we’re getting robot workers but keeping human policies that are inherently built to help fix human error? Confused," wrote Adam Ryan, CEO of Austin-based Workweek on X.
Kate O'Neil, CEO of Nashville-based Opre, took the time to post a video response dressing down Lattice's product announcement. Opre uses AI to write performance reviews, yet even O'Neil found Lattice's announcement tone deaf.
"Elevating AI to an equal to me as an employee does not foster an environment of psychological safety," she said in the video.
One X user, BuccoCapital, speculated the move might have something to do with Lattice's pricing model that includes plans that charge companies per employee to use its software.
Lattice was founded in 2015 by Jack Altman, Eric Koslow, Sandra Smith, Miles Grimshaw, Vince Hankes and Jason Pressman. It has raised $330 million from major investors like Khosla Ventures, Tiger Global Management and Salesforce Ventures.
Franklin took over as CEO from Jack Altman in January. She was a longtime Salesforce executive and held the titles of president and chief marketing officer there.
