Disney star debuts AI avatars of the dead

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. When you thought users forming attachments to AI models was concerning, the longer term is simply going to get weirder.

A brand new app called 2wai just launched the flexibility to create interactive AI avatars of deceased relatives — and the immediate backlash calling it “objectively evil” suggests we can have found one in every of AI’s ethical breaking points.

ICYMI: We debuted a brand new section each Monday showcasing how The Rundown team is using AI in their very own lives, each in and out of doors of labor. Take a look at the newest workflows below!

In today’s AI rundown:

• Disney star’s AI avatar app to speak with the dead

• The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases

• Use Claude to arrange what you are promoting funds

• Satya Nadella details Microsoft’s ‘positive-sum’ AI future

• 4 recent AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

2WAI

 😇 Disney star’s AI avatar app to speak with the dead

The Rundown: Disney Channel actor Calum Worthy just launched 2wai, an AI platform that creates interactive avatars of deceased relatives, which might speak and interact across life events — drawing comparisons to the techno-dystopian show ‘Black Mirror.’

The main points:

• The app generates “HoloAvatars” from just minutes of recorded footage, allowing users to speak with digital versions of departed relations.

• A viral promo video showed an AI grandmother interacting along with her grandson from infancy through maturity, receiving hundreds of critical responses on X.

• The beta version is currently free on Apple’s App Store, with plans to transition to a tiered subscription model and expand to Android devices soon.

• Critics called the thought “demonic” and “objectively evil,” arguing it exploits grief and prevents healthy mourning by simulating the deceased without consent.

Why it matters: When you thought users getting emotionally attached to AI models like 4o was strange, things are only going to get weirder. Ethical questions surrounding consent/identity of the deceased and commodifying grief aside, selling a hole avatar as “preserving a loved one” seems like an AI psychosis event waiting to occur.

TOGETHER WITH MOZILLA DATA COLLECTIVE

🤖 Construct higher AI with people-first data

The Rundown: Mozilla Data Collective is a brand new platform for real-world data sharing, home to multilingual, multimodal datasets in 300+ languages, built and curated directly by contributors. They publish unique, permissively licensed datasets for ASR, TTS, Translation, and SLM, accessible via the datacollective Python package.

Recent releases this week include:

• Text-to-speech: Bulgarian corpus for TTS

• Code-switching: Dialogues annotated for codeswitching in Nahuatl

• Youth speech: Corpus of Indonesian youth-speech audio

Discover unique open datasets on Mozilla Data Collective.

THE RUNDOWN ROUNDTABLE

💡 The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases

The Rundown: The Rundown Roundtable is a brand new weekly feature where we poll members of The Rundown staff on how they’re using AI each in work and every day lives.

Joey, Head of Partnerships: I’ve been using Sora as my secret superpower with the kiddos. At a recent family dinner with a pack of 4–7-year-olds, I pulled out Sora and commenced spinning their wildest ideas into fun mini clips. The youngsters were entertained, the parents were relieved, and I officially earned the title of “fun aunt.” Win-win!

Shubham, Editor: My Deco mesh network (essential unit upstairs, secondary downstairs) struggled to cover the back of the home on the bottom floor. Gemini helped walk me through Deco app settings, gave the default router login password (it guessed it appropriately), and suggested manual channel tweaks to enhance coverage.

When that didn’t work, I shared my ground-floor layout via Gemini live, walking with it. It helped me find the perfect spot for the second unit, where it connected perfectly with the primary one and boosted speed. It saved me the expense of a 3rd unit.

Zach, AI Author: This summer, I used ChatGPT to assist me plan, construct, plant, and manage our garden. I uploaded pictures of the space, and ChatGPT helped me determine where certain plants should go for optimal sunlight/preferences, companion options that grow together well, helped construct out watering schedules, and other helpful suggestions.

I used to be able to repeatedly provide pictures and updates as all the things grew, asking it questions as my on-demand gardening assistant. A really successful first 12 months, and I’m already excited for next season to expand things much more!

AI TRAINING

📈 Use Claude to arrange what you are promoting funds

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn the way to organize scattered business finance documents right into a neat, visually appealing dashboard using Claude, turning messy spreadsheets into polished financial snapshots without hiring an accountant.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to Claude, register (paid plan advisable for more iterations and tools), select Sonnet 4.5, and enable prolonged considering and web search in settings

2. Upload your financial documents (revenue statements, invoices, expenses, inventory) and prompt Claude with what you would like: your goal, file types, organization structure, and desired aesthetic

3. Review the generated dashboard showing metrics like total revenue, expenses, net profit, plus pie charts and bar graphs; request changes in natural language

4. Add enrichments like “Add a column showing what number of days since each invoice to see which pending payments are getting old,” then click publish and share the artifact link with stakeholders

Pro Tip: It is a strong use case for small teams. It helps you and your stakeholders see what’s working, what’s bleeding money, and what must be tuned or cut.

PRESENTED BY BLAND

🗣️There’s an AI company without churn?

The Rundown: In San Francisco, there’s an AI company that’s making voice agents that sound human, run 24/7, and never make you wait on hold.

Call Bland and you may:

• Experience human-sounding AI

• Role-play along with your ideal use case

• Have a phone call that you simply actually enjoy

Wish to try for yourself? Book a demo today! 

MICROSOFT

🔮 Satya Nadella details Microsoft’s ‘positive-sum’ AI future

The Rundown: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella published a post on the corporate’s ‘positive-sum’ mentality to constructing within the AI wave, coming alongside a candid appearance on the Dwarkesh Podcast discussing AGI and the longer term of the industry.

The main points:

• Nadella pointed to the brand new AI superfactory as a ‘positive sum’ collaboration, emphasizing partnerships that “catalyze and compound progress.”

• The CEO said the AI era’s success shall be defined when the “overall economy and society themselves reach recent heights,” not company valuations.

• He also revealed a shift from “per user” to “per agent” pricing, treating AI systems as infrastructure customers moderately than simply tools for humans to make use of.

• Nadella also said Microsoft now has access to “all of it” in regard to OpenAI IP (except physical consumer hardware) for seven years under the brand new deal.

Why it matters: Nadella’s arguing that AI’s success should not be measured by which company hits top valuations, but by whether it transforms the world. It’s a noble effort amid surging AI spending, but with society’s growing tension on whether AI will concentrate power or distribute it, skeptics will need more data before feeling the AGI.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

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• 📚 Google NotebookLM – Recent integrations for Deep Research, Sheets, Images, and PDFs

• 🖥️ Holo 2 – Lightweight models for powering computer use agents

• 🤖 GPT-5.1 – OpenAI’s upgraded model with personality customization

*Sponsored Listing

📰 The whole lot else in AI today

OpenAI launched a pilot of group chats for users in Japan, Recent Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan, allowing as much as 20 people to collaborate in shared conversations.

Google introduced AI shopping upgrades for the vacations, including an agent that calls stores to ascertain inventory, agentic checkout, product browsing in Gemini, and more.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is reportedly planning to step down as early as next 12 months, with hardware engineering chief John Ternus viewed as the favourite to interchange him.

ByteDance Seed released Depth Anything 3, an AI model that predicts spatially consistent geometry from images to create accurate 3D depth maps.

Sakana AI became Japan’s most dear private company after a brand new funding round that valued the startup at $2.6B.

Google announced a $40B investment in Texas through 2027 to construct data centers and AI infrastructure, including a $30M Energy Impact Fund and training programs.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Jackie S. in Jersey City, NJ:

“I recently paused my profession in tech to be a full-time mom. I became the household’s CFO overnight. I’m not a developer, but Google AI Studio made it surprisingly easy to construct my very own budgeting app with a chat-based “Budget Agent.” Now I just tell it to log expenses, update monthly budgets per category, or give me insights and suggestions for next month. The app also gives me a clean dashboard with dynamic charts that show spend by category and tracks how we’re pacing against every month’s budget.”

How do you utilize AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: AI’s autonomous attack era begins

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Blue Origin nails SpaceX signature move

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: ‘Putin lookalike’ robot faceplants

• Today’s AI tool guide: Use Claude to arrange what you are promoting funds

• Watch our last live workshop: AI Essentials for Leaders and Managers

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown