Learning in the shadow of the avatar: organizational knowledge, AI digital personas, and the ethics of employee learning identity

Purpose This viewpoint shows how AI digital personas, AI systems that hold employee knowledge and behavioral data, create new methods for organizations to learn and manage their knowledge and shape their employees’ professional identities. This practice creates urgent ethical challenges that Human Resource Development (HRD) practitioners must address. Design/methodology/approach The study employs organizational learning theory and knowledge management frameworks, together with the emerging AI-in-learning literature, to conduct a conceptual analysis that identifies the ethical implications arising when organizations create permanent AI avatars that store employee knowledge. Findings The digital personas created by artificial intelligence create a new paradox, as organizations use digital avatars to transform employee knowledge into machine-readable data. This process creates conditions that cause people to lose their ability to create new knowledge, while also creating confusion about who in the organization possesses authentic, expertise-based knowledge. Research limitations/implications The principles of avatar governance require testing through real-world applications in various organizational settings. The study needs to examine how employees react to knowledge systems that use avatar technology as their core functionality. Practical implications HRD must proactively govern avatar consent, attribution, and knowledge identity rights. Originality/value The research introduces epistemic displacement as a new term to describe the situation in which employees lose connection to their knowledge once it becomes part of artificial intelligence systems. The study provides HRD professionals with their first practical framework for assessing how avatar-based knowledge systems impact identity, ethical matters, and learning processes.