Match a hired specialist to a real face
Replace the generated default avatar with an actual headshot when a specialist employee represents someone specific to your team, like a named account manager or support lead.
Employee Avatar Upload
Upload a custom profile photo for any AI employee straight from their Profile tab, replacing the default generated avatar. JPEG, PNG, GIF, and WebP files up to 5 MB are accepted, and the change takes effect immediately. The photo appears everywhere that employee shows up: chat, the org chart, the virtual office, notifications, and task cards. Any member of your workspace can change it, not only the person who hired that employee.
Every AI employee starts with a generated avatar, but you can swap it for a real photo, a brand mark, or any image that helps your team recognize who they're talking to. Open the employee's Profile tab, hover over the avatar, and click the camera icon to pick a file. The change lands straight away, with no review step and nothing to save afterwards.
The upload accepts JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP files up to 5 MB. Sistava checks the file type and size in the browser before it uploads, so a mismatched file gets rejected immediately with a clear message instead of failing partway through a slow upload. The server then runs the same two checks again on its own, because a rule enforced only in the browser is not really enforced at all.
The photo is stored in your own file storage, not pulled from a third-party avatar service or generated on the fly, so it stays exactly as you uploaded it and does not change on its own. A thumbnail is generated automatically and that thumbnail URL is what every other part of the platform reads, so the new photo shows up consistently in chat headers, the virtual office, notifications, and task cards without you having to update anything else.
Uploading again replaces the existing photo. The old file is overwritten and a new thumbnail is generated in its place, so an employee never ends up with duplicate or orphaned images from earlier uploads. There is no version history to prune later either: one employee holds exactly one photo at a time, and the tenth swap costs you no more than the first.
Any member of your workspace can update an employee's photo, not just the person who hired them, which matters when a teammate wants to tidy up how the team looks without waiting on the original hirer. That is looser than most workspace settings on purpose, because a picture is presentation rather than permission. Nothing an employee can see, do, or spend changes when its photo does.
What You Can Upload
JPEG, PNG, GIF, and WebP images up to 5 MB are accepted. Anything larger or in a different format is rejected with a specific error message before the upload even starts, so you're not left guessing why a file didn't take.
There's no cropping or filtering step: whatever image you upload is what gets shown, resized down to a thumbnail for fast loading. If you want a specific crop, prepare the image before uploading.
Where the Photo Shows Up
Once uploaded, the same photo is used everywhere the employee's identity appears: the chat panel, the employee's card on the workspace dashboard, the org chart, the 3D virtual office, task assignments, and notification emails and in-app alerts that reference that employee.
This works because every one of those surfaces reads the employee's stored avatar URL rather than holding its own copy of the image, so a single upload updates the employee's look everywhere at once instead of requiring you to update several places separately.
Employee Photos and Your Own Profile Picture
These are two separate pictures and it saves confusion to keep them apart. An employee avatar belongs to that AI employee inside one workspace and is set from the employee's Profile tab. Your own profile picture is a personal account setting, reached from the profile icon in the top right corner, and it follows you into every workspace you collaborate in.
Changing one never touches the other. Uploading a headshot for an AI employee leaves how you appear in chat and in the collaborator list exactly as it was, and updating your own picture leaves every employee avatar alone.
How It Works
A direct upload from the Profile tab, validated on both ends
Hovering over an employee's avatar in the Profile tab reveals a camera icon; clicking it opens a normal file picker. The moment a file is chosen, the browser checks its size and MIME type against the same 5 MB and JPEG/PNG/GIF/WebP limits the server enforces, so obviously invalid files are caught before any network request happens.
Once the file passes the client check, it uploads to the backend, which re-validates size and type independently (never trusting the browser alone), then stores the image and generates a thumbnail. That thumbnail's URL is written back onto the employee record, which is what makes the new photo appear immediately across chat, the office view, and anywhere else the employee's avatar is rendered.
If you upload again later, the existing file is overwritten in place and the thumbnail is regenerated, so there is no accumulation of old images and no stale cached photo left behind.
Use Cases
Brand an employee for a client-facing role
Upload your company logo or a branded icon for an employee who shows up in customer-facing channels, so the identity matches the rest of your brand.
Make employees easier to tell apart at a glance
In a workspace with several employees on the same team, distinct uploaded photos make it faster to scan the org chart, the virtual office, or a busy notification feed and know who did what.
Make a shared workspace readable for a new teammate
Someone joins and meets six AI employees at once. Recognizable photos, whether headshots, icons, or plain color blocks, make the org chart and the office view legible on their first day instead of a wall of lookalike placeholders.
Comparison
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Several AI employees on one team, all wearing near identical generated avatars. | Distinct photos that tell you who did what the moment you scan the board. |
| An employee your customers actually see, looking nothing like the rest of your brand. | Your own logo or mark on the employee that shows up in customer-facing channels. |
| Changing a picture means chasing it through chat, the org chart, the office view, and task cards. | One upload, and every one of those surfaces shows the new photo. |
| Only whoever hired the employee can tidy up how the team looks. | Any workspace member can update the photo, so nobody is waiting on anybody. |
FAQ
How do I change an AI employee's profile picture in Sistava?
Open that employee's Profile tab, hover over the avatar, and click the camera icon that appears. Choose a JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP file up to 5 MB and it uploads right away, replacing the generated avatar everywhere that employee is shown.
Can I crop or edit the image before it uploads?
No. There is no cropping, zooming, or filtering step: the image you pick is the image that gets used, resized down to a thumbnail so it loads quickly. If you want a particular crop or a square framing, prepare the file in any image editor first.
Does uploading an employee photo change my own profile picture?
No, the two are completely separate. An employee avatar belongs to that AI employee inside one workspace, while your own profile picture is a personal account setting that follows you into every workspace you are a member of. Changing either one leaves the other untouched.
What image formats and sizes are supported?
JPEG, PNG, GIF, and WebP, up to 5 MB per file. Both the browser and the server check the file before accepting it, so an unsupported format or an oversized file is rejected with a clear message rather than failing silently.
Who is allowed to change an employee's photo?
Any member of your workspace, not only the person who originally hired that employee. This lets any teammate keep the team's look consistent without needing to track down the original hirer.
What happens to the old photo when I upload a new one?
It's replaced. The new file overwrites the stored image and a new thumbnail is generated in its place, so you won't end up with leftover or duplicate images from earlier uploads.
Will the new photo show up in past chat messages or old notifications?
It updates everywhere the employee's current avatar is displayed going forward: chat, the office, task cards, and new notifications. It does not retroactively rewrite images already embedded in messages that were sent before the change.
Where Employee Avatar Upload fits
Employee Avatar Upload is part of Things you hire or set up.
Browse a marketplace of pre-built AI agent roles and full teams, or build your own from scratch. Organize them into teams with leaders, set up your org chart, and onboard new hires in minutes. Every employee arrives configured and ready to deliver from day one.
- Things you hire or set up: A full workforce. Hired in seconds.
Read the guide
More in Fast Onboarding
- Hire an AI Employee: Browse the Marketplace and hire an AI employee for a specific role: a department specialist, a personal assistant, or a custom role you define from scratch. Hiring is free and instant. You land straight in the new employee's chat, and every skill, duty, and tool it starts with can be changed afterward from its dashboard.
- Interview Before Hiring: Chat with any employee template before you hire it, on the public marketplace pages or inside the app, to see how it thinks and communicates about your actual work. When you're convinced, say so in the conversation or click Hire; nothing is added to your team until you decide.
- Employee Builder: Employee Builder is the "Build Your Own" card in the Marketplace: instead of hiring a pre-built role, you start from a blank template and set the name, role, and persona yourself. The new hire starts with one skill, Research & Brief, and nothing else pre-assigned, so you add skills, duties, and tools from the Skills, Duties, and Tools tabs to match the exact job you need done. It is a Custom-plan feature; every other plan hires from the marketplace's pre-built roles instead.
- Personal Assistants: Every account starts with a Personal Assistant already hired, ready to talk before you decide who else to bring on. No marketplace trip, no setup, no decision to make first.
- Get Started Through Conversation: When you hire an AI employee, they land in your chat with a short greeting that names their role and what they handle, then ask what you need first. There is no setup wizard, no progress bar, and no settings panel to fill in before they can work. You customize name, persona, skills, and tools later from their dashboard, but none of that is required before the first message.
- Model Selection: Every employee runs on a model you choose, not one fixed default. Switch models per employee from the AI Models page whenever a job calls for more reasoning power or a cheaper, faster response.
- Manage Employee Status: Pause, resume, or let go of an AI employee without losing anything. Suspend an employee when you don't need them right now and bring them back exactly as you left them, or terminate one and keep their full chat history and work record in your Alumni list. Terminated employees stop counting against your plan's employee limit, and you can re-hire the same role later.
- Hire a Full Team: Hire a complete pre-built team from the Marketplace in one click: every member configured, a leader assigned, and sprint planning ready to start. Or build a custom team from your existing hires, pick a leader, and set it up yourself. Either way, you talk to one leader and they coordinate the rest.
- Keep Former Team Members: When you let an employee go, they don't disappear. Sistava moves them into your Alumni list, where their chat history and work stay intact and readable. If you need them back, one click restores them to active with everything they knew still in place.
- Marketplace: The Marketplace is where you browse and hire AI employees: two personal assistants, a specialist for every department (Marketing, Sales, Support, HR, Operations), and a Custom AI Talent card if none of the pre-built roles fit. Click a card's photo to preview its skills, duties, tools, and persona before you commit, then click Hire to add it to your workforce and land straight in its chat. Hiring is free; you only spend credits when an employee does work.
- Multiple Workspaces: Create additional workspaces under the same login, each with its own AI employees, conversations, training data, billing, and collaborators. Nothing crosses a workspace boundary by default, so a separate client, business, or department stays fully isolated. Your plan sets how many workspaces you can create, and you switch between them without signing out.
- Academy Live Sessions: Learn how to put an AI employee to work in a live session with an Applied AI Engineer, tailored to your business. Sessions run about an hour, one on one or in a small group, and walk through the same curriculum as the free Academy course. Free for founders, one hundred dollars per session otherwise.