I didn’t think much about my death or my legacy until giving birth to my daughter in 2024. I wasn’t looking to disappear or anything, but my departure from the world simply wasn’t top of mind (I’m lucky, I know). But ever since she was born, I can’t consider my own mortality without crying. About once or twice a day, I remember that anything that happens to me happens to her, and a lump rises in my throat.
So my interest was piqued when I heard about 2wai — a buzzy new app that creates digital avatars to preserve your likeness for your descendants. But is it, as some argue online, a dystopian, Black Mirror-esque platform that attempts to resurrect the dead? Or, as the company’s co-founder argues, is it a form of “ethical AI” that’s an educational tool for future generations? I went straight to the source and spoke to the co-founder of the company — and even made my own avatar — to figure out if the app might quell my anxieties.
What is 2wai?
According to the company website, 2wai is “the world’s first social app for avatars.” By recording videos of themselves speaking and telling stories, users create their own virtual likeness that’s intended to be a sharply accurate portrayal of their body and personality. Having learned your characteristics, mannerisms, and behavioral habits via your recordings, this representation will be able to chat with and answer questions from other users in perpetuity through the app — even after you’ve passed away. As the company explains, 2wai allows you to “create your very own digital twin — a HoloAvatar who looks and talks like you, and even shares the same memories!”
On November 11, 2wai released an ad showing one possible application: In it, a visibly pregnant woman discusses her baby with an avatar of her deceased mother. Many years later, that now-adult son checks in with his virtual grandma, who offers advice, wisdom, and love.
The video, posted by 2wai cofounder, actor Calum Worthy, was immediately controversial. “This is one of the most vile things I’ve seen in my life,” an X user claimed. “I wish people would just go outside and make friends,” another X user lamented.
I wasn’t so cynical. If tragedy struck, my child might appreciate being able to have a conversation with some semblance of me. Wouldn’t that little peace of mind be a net good for the person who matters to me the most? To get a clearer picture of what the app can and can’t do, I spoke to Worthy about the potential of 2wai.
How did 2wai start?
Worthy is an actor who did the rounds on the Disney Channel and a long list of films and TV series, starting as a kid. So it’s not entirely surprising that he’s had experiences being impersonated online. According to Worthy, 2wai is intended to hand “ownership” of one’s likeness back to the user. “You can make an avatar of yourself,” he explains. “You own your name, your image, and all of your data, so you’re in control.”
Worthy also emphasized that he and his co-founders developed 2wai to be an “ethical” AI company. “I’m an environmentalist. Our avatars are processed on devices, which have an extremely low impact on the planet in terms of carbon emissions and water use.”
Worthy believes the online backlash to 2wai stems from a misunderstanding of the company’s intentions — and he relates. “People are very afraid of AI, and I stand with them. I’m very fearful of AI,” he says. “But the one misconception that we noticed online is that people were afraid that we could create an avatar of someone who’s no longer alive. But we don’t feel comfortable providing that option. Only you can create an avatar of yourself.”
“The value is not for the generation who’s grieving a person who has passed,” he continues. “The value is for the generation who would have never had a chance to learn about that person. I created my avatar, and I’ve inserted my thoughts, perspectives, and stories into my avatar’s brain. When I do pass away, my great-great-great grandchildren will be able to ask me questions about who I was.”
Though the app wasn’t designed to shepherd users through loss, my experience left me thinking that it could provide some solace during the grieving process. So I decided to try making an avatar of my own.
How does a 2wai avatar work?
After downloading 2wai, I opened the app and was met with an affable, smiling avatar of Worthy. “He” helpfully walked me through the setup process, asking icebreaker-style questions about how I spend my time and what I live for. I input responses about my passions and pastimes: family, Tubi movies, Mexican cuisine.
To copy my likeness, I had to film myself; a white outline appeared on my camera screen, and I fit myself inside. I recorded myself standing still, then speaking and reciting a simple script, so that the app could capture my voice.
My avatar self took about 20 minutes to generate, but the result wasn’t as smooth and natural as the digital version of Worthy I’d seen — when mine spoke, her mouth was a glitchy blur. Her body toggled between a couple of positions, never moving fluidly through space. Her voice was spot-on, but her personality was undeniably stilted; she had nothing to say about cooking, watching movies, or playing with her kid. When I asked her my child’s name, which I’d previously input into her “brain,” she said, “That name could refer to several entities,” and described some famous fictional characters.
When I told her, “You’re an avatar of me,” she replied, “That’s an interesting concept. I am here to assist you as a digital representation, helping to convey your ideas and provide information as needed.” (Not as comforting as the grandma in the ad, if I’m being honest.)
Switching gears, I asked how she operated. “I function using advanced language processing algorithms…” she started. Her cadence was very ChatGPT-ish, so I asked if she was hooked up to OpenAI.
“Yes, I am developed using technology from OpenAI, which powers my language processing capabilities,” she explained. “I operate from servers, which allows for more complex processing and access to updates and data necessary for generating responses.”
That response seemed to contradict Worthy’s assertions about the company’s low environmental impact. OpenAI hasn’t released official information on its power usage since 2020, but a 2025 paper in the MIT Technology Review found that training those servers takes a massive amount of electricity: “It’s estimated that training OpenAI’s GPT-4 took over $100 million and consumed 50 gigawatt-hours of energy, enough to power San Francisco for three days.” I wasn’t sure that interacting with my avatar was truly as gentle on the environment as claimed, so, feeling uncomfortable about my carbon footprint, I closed the app.
Hoping to preserve oneself for future generations isn’t anything new. Humans hold an impulse to draw, photograph, and record ourselves — anything to say, “I was here.” But 2wai feels unique since it’s designed to be interactive: I liked the idea that a version of me could answer my daughter’s questions about my favorite songs or my first kiss.
Will I use 2wai again? In chatting with my glitchy avatar, I didn’t feel like I’d met my very own digital twin. She couldn’t bite her lip, rub her temples, or adjust her glasses, as I’m wont to do. And I wasn’t confident that my child would find solace in a digital representation that couldn’t remember her name, no matter how crisp that image is.
When I considered whether my descendants would get anything out of this, I recalled one of my experiences with grief. My grandmother was a mysterious, stubborn woman who loved cigarettes and hard boundaries. There’s a family rumor floating around that she was shadily adopted — maybe having been whisked from 1930s Juarez over the then-minimal border to El Paso to secretly pose as someone else’s biological child. But she rarely volunteered information about her early years, and we weren’t supposed to “bother her” by bringing up bad memories. Now, I’d give anything to have a fully interactive version of her that could tell me the truth.
When she passed in 2013, we scoured her possessions — I wanted to know all the stories she’d chosen not to tell us in life. Instead, we found only a box of yellowed newspaper clippings of her children’s birth announcements. All I learned was that she loved her kids — something I already knew.
As a millennial, I don’t keep many printed-out photos or physical mementos. One day, when my daughter goes through my things, I guess the silly apps and notes on my phone will be her version of my grandmother’s delicate paper ephemera. And she may want answers about whatever secrets I’ll end up keeping from her. But I suspect that an awkward avatar of me spouting AI aphorisms won’t be a satisfying way for her to understand the truth of who I was. No matter what technology looks like decades from now, there will always be messy, unspoken parts of a human story that never get archived. I can only hope that over the course of my life, I’ll give her enough to remember me by.
