This might be obvious to some but I haven’t seen it discussed anywhere so I’m posting here. Happy to discuss further. SPOILERS obviously.

I think Karen from HR is either Akara directly or a bot fabricated by Akara . Most (but not all) of the clues here are indirect and thus not a hard proof:

• Karen’s profile is suspiciously generic as Brandeis mentions. IRL it would be a pretty standard sign of her being a bot. Even though we get mentions of some photos, this doesn’t seem a problem with the possibilities of modern generative AI let alone the omnipotent Akara.
  
• Karen is crucial to gather necessary information to bring SPW down. There are at least a few times where you feel stuck and usually the only way to move forward is to get a certain person’s number from Karen. And as Akara herself mentions shortly after her purpose has been to bring Radhika’s SPW down through Brandeis so it would only seem natural for her to create one extra element to help Brandeis achieve Akara’s goal.
  
• As Brandeis himself mentions multiple times Karen knows worryingly a lot of info on all the characters in Supercontinent which again should be trivial for an all-knowing AI who’s been spending months and sometimes years with those people.
  
• Lastly and most importantly. When you call Karen as Edgar she responds with "Edgar, daddy! So good to hear your voice!". This gives us two clues right away. First we have learned earlier that Akara has been programmed to call Edgar "father" - Karen calls him "daddy". Second, Karen specifies that it’s good to hear Edgar’s voice and not just hear Edgar. This can hint that Karen actually knows this is not Edgar calling but someone using his voice and the only people knowing about this are Brandeis himself, Donovan and of course Akara who has fabricated that voice for Brandeis . Another similar one even if a bit far-fetched is that when Brandeis calls Karen as Adrian Ferguson and asks for Edgar’s number Karen mentions to be patient and compassionate towards Edgar which would make sense for Akara - having spent a lot of time with Edgar it would be no surprise if she had developed a deeper feelings towards him than any other Supercontinent’s employee.
  
• Also earlier when Donovan talks to Larissa at the bar and asks her about plans for Akara marketing (at least under Lust mood), she suggests: ‘Since they're specialized in counseling, hiring them to work as managers in human resources.’