Doing the rounds on social media is the most disturbing advert I’ve ever seen. And I’m telling you about it because you need to be forewarned, just in case this Christmas a child or a grandchild happens to mention that it might be an idea to record a video for posterity, and opens the 2wai app.

2wai is the company responsible for the ad, and the service it offers is the creation of AI versions of family members so that relatives can talk to them after they’re dead. Catch ’em while they’re still alive, says 2wai; film a three-minute interview and Bob’s your AI uncle. ‘Loved ones we’ve lost can be part of our future.’ That’s its catchphrase.

The 2wai advert is about ‘Baby Charlie’, and it goes like this. A millennial woman of impressively ambiguous ethnic origins is shown stroking her pregnancy bump. ‘He’s getting bigger, see?’ says the woman, holding out her smartphone so it can see the bump too. On the phone screen, an AI version
of her own grey-haired mother, who we later learn has recently died, clasps her hands with joy and leans forward as if to better see the bump: ‘Oh honey, that’s wonderful!’

In the next scene, the bump has become a boy. Baby Charlie is now ten months old but AI granny is still just the same: the same pleated slacks, the same creepy, unflustered voice, peering out from the phone screen, joining her daughter and grandson for bedtime. Just a normal, blended AI/human 21st-century family. The daughter says:........

© The Spectator