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2wai AI Avatar App Faces Viral Criticism for Recreating the Dead

A launch video for the iOS beta turned the service into a flashpoint over consent.

Overview

  • Actor Calum Worthy launched 2wai, which touts lifelike, interactive video avatars generated from brief recordings, with promotional claims that three minutes of footage can be enough.
  • A widely viewed ad showing a family conversing with a deceased grandmother’s avatar drew tens of millions of views and denunciations as "Black Mirror"-like or "demonic."
  • 2wai says users can create digital twins of themselves rather than others and that a family controls an avatar if it was recorded before death.
  • The app is available as a free beta on Apple’s App Store with premium paid features, includes prebuilt historical-figure bots, and is slated for Android.
  • Worthy and co-founder Russell Geyser say they have raised about $5 million in pre-seed funding and are pitching creator-controlled avatars with guardrails.