Your next job interview might be with AI cartoon doing the hiring

The character on your screen looks something like a Pixar rendition of Harry Potter, its face forever fixed in a pleasant, inoffensive smile.

- KEVIN JIANG

Billed as the "world's first AI interviewer," this cartoon character is interviewing tens of thousands of job applicants each month. But experts are worried about qualified candidates who may be falling through the cracks.

“Hey!” it says in its robotic voice, mouth flapping open and closed uncannily. “I’m your AI interviewer. How are you?”

Billed as the “world’s first AI interviewer,” this bot is the brainchild of L.A.-based company Micro1 —and its founder says it’s already being used to vet tens of thousands of candidates around the world, including Canada.

Generative artificial intelligence is transforming the hiring industry, with some recruiters, employers and social networking sites like LinkedIn and Indeed leaning hard into the technology. But some experts are concerned about its rapid adoption given AI’s known issues with bias and “hallucinations,” or stating inaccurate information as if it were fact.

“We do not want AI to fully determine the fate of the candidate — AI is not at a place where it can do that yet,” Ali Ansari, founder and CEO of Micro1, told the Star. For now, his recruitment engine functions as a pre-screening tool, performing technical interviews before candidates move onto human interviewers.

“Our focus is on engineering candidates right now,” Ansari said. “But the tool is pretty generalized. And there’s companies using it for other roles currently as well.”