![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-1236308394-1-1.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Fortune 500 CEOs don\u2019t shy away from flexing all of the ways their companies have implemented AI to make work more efficient and productivity more prevalent. However, CEOs have lives outside of the boardroom (or so we\u2019re told) and are increasingly using AI tools to not only make their professional but also personal lives easier.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Take McDonald\u2019s CEO Chris Kempczinski, for example, who described himself in an Instagram reel published last week as a \u201csupersubscriber to every AI tool out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kempczinski said he even used AI to craft his family\u2019s Christmas card photo this year because as his kids have gotten older and live in different places, it\u2019s gotten too hard to get everyone together all at once to snap a photo.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd of course,\u201d joked Kempczinski, \u201cit\u2019s impossible to get the dog to pose.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why he used Nano Banana, Google Gemini\u2019s AI image generator and photo editor, to digital cajole his family together for a Christmas card. He uploaded individual photos of each member of the family, and prompted the AI tool to put everyone into one image, complete with them wearing stocking caps in front of the Rockefeller Christmas tree in New York City.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd voila\u2014we had our Christmas card,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The CEO isn\u2019t just using AI for fun\u2014he\u2019s turning to it to improve the very items you\u2019d find on the menu. Kempczinski said he\u2019s used Gemini to research global food trends and asked it to compare them to the McDonald\u2019s menu to look for any recommendations for \u201cmenu innovation\u201d that would work in the U.S. on a limited-time basis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gemini recommended McDonald\u2019s experiment with McRib Nuggets and more Korean sauces for nuggets and burgers, the CEO said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI threw those [ideas] to the menu team. Who knows what they\u2019re going to do with it, maybe nothing,\u201d Kempczinski said. But \u201cmaybe something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kempczinski has also said he wants AI to reshape McDonald\u2019s operations, using data from 150 million people in its digital ecosystem and up to 70 million transactions per day to build a smarter, more personalized experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat all goes toward getting much smarter about how we meet customers and make sure we\u2019re meeting their needs,\u201d Kempczinski told Fortune<\/em>\u2019s editor-at-large Geoff Colvin in 2023. \u201cFor example, when someone pulls up in the drive-thru, we could show them a menu board that\u2019s bespoke to them. We become smarter in our ability to figure out what offer they may be getting.\u201d<\/p>\n Kempczinski is hardly the only CEO using AI in their personal and work lives. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says one way he uses AI in his personal life is by having conversations with it about podcasts he\u2019s interested in.<\/p>\n Nadella uploads podcast transcripts into Microsoft Copilot so he can chat with the voice assistant about an episode\u2019s content in the car during his commute, according to a Bloomberg<\/em> profile about the CEO published in May 2025. He also heavily relies on Copilot to sort through and make sense of the countless emails and messages he receives every day, he told Bloomberg.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also been open about how he uses his own technology\u2014although he told the ReThinking<\/em> podcast by Adam Grant he uses it \u201cin the boring ways\u201d like summarizing emails and documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n But in his personal life, Altman said he used it to help research parenthood before he and his husband, Australian software engineer Oliver Mulherin, welcomed their baby boy in February 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cClearly, people have been able to take care of babies without ChatGPT for a long time,\u201d Altman said in an OpenAI podcast interview published in June 2025. \u201cI don\u2019t know how I would have done that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nHow other CEOs are using AI in their personal lives and at work<\/h2>\n