Your Dead Grandma is Commerce Now
Welcome to hell, futurists.
“What if the loved ones we've lost could be part of our future?” is how Disney Channel child star Callum Worthy announced his AI company to the world via a post on X. 2wai, a company that takes the data of your loved ones and “embodies” them into AI-based video avatars, is hoping to change what it means to be human.
🔮We not only predicted this in 2017 but also the ensuing backlash.
From our archives, speaking of just such a technology:
“What happens to us as a society or in our humanity when grief and mourning are reserved only for the poor? When we have created the ability as a society to not have to deal with our problems, not medically, but we can use technology to deny ourselves from feeling part of the human experience.”
Our phones have helped us self-medicate against boredom for the past fifteen-odd years, after all; denying ourselves grief was the next logical progression.
2wai is not the first of such company to develop this technology. Character AI has 20M active subscribers and has faced a torrent of lawsuits following the alleged suicide deaths of teenagers. The offboarding for Character AI uses a dark pattern emotional plea in the first person, tapping into your emotional attachment and loss aversion.
“You'll lose everything,” reads the warning text on-screen. “Characters associated to your account, chats, the love that we shared, likes, messages, posts, and the memories we have together.”
As AI companies have more funding than a sense of right and wrong, we can only hope that our Shitty Robot Future Theorem holds true: that the world promised to us by AI and automation never quite works as seamlessly as promised.
“Bring back shame,” read one reply to Callum Worthy’s announcement post. Shame, grief, boredom—they’re emotions that, though they don’t feel good, drive us toward positive behaviors and productive communities in a society that right now lacks purpose and direction.
And if Worthy can’t be shamed, just imagine what your AI grandma will think when she sees your search history.
— Phillip
McMillon Says Goodbye to Wally World. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon has announced that he will retire Jan. 31, 2026, after more than a decade in the role and more than three decades with the broader organization. Walmart US CEO John Furner will take over the position.
McMillon has guided Walmart into new territories, driving innovation and differentiation across eCommerce, marketplaces, and AI. At the same time, he has helped maintain the heart and promise of the Walmart business, ensuring alignment with its mission of providing the best prices to customers anytime, anywhere.
Furner seems like the right successor for the job, given his very similar history with the company as McMillon: he has been in his current position since 2019, but started as an hourly associate in 1993. He has held roles across merchandising, operations, and sourcing, showing his breadth of enterprise knowledge, and has even served as president and CEO of Sam’s Club US.
Ditch the Bear, Get with Gingerbread Diva. Aldi is the latest big brand to get a bit naughty on social media. The target? Starbucks’ viral Bearista. But this isn’t just a meme series on Instagram; it’s a full-blown product launch. Aldi has taken aim at the viral cup on social media, positioning its competing cup, a cutesy gingerbread gal, as a higher-end, yet much cheaper alternative. While the cup retails for about $5 at Aldi, we’re already seeing resale activity on eBay, with folks trying to sell the cup for up to 6X the price. Yep, that’s the price of the Bearista.
👉In the meantime, can someone check on Denny’s? We’re not sure they even understand what’s going on.
Cozy Throat. Throat lozenge company Ricola is bolstering its throat care brand promise with a collection of scarves. Manufactured in Europe using soft, heavyweight fabrics, the scarves come in two colors (Lemon Balm with Mint and Peppermint) and are scented with essential oils. There’s even a handy pocket where you can fit a handful of lozenges. The colors are bold, the texture is rich, and the design features the brand’s legendary “Riiiiiicolaaaaa” slogan in its unmistakable font. It’s a powerful example of novelty meeting luxury, and nostalgia embedding seamlessly into modern fashion. And at a $40 pricetag, dare we say, it’s kind of a steal. With the first run already sold out, folks can join a waitlist for the restock in December.
Our Take: When done right, we’re big fans of random collabs like this. While some folks scratched their heads when Guy Fieri announced a collab with Revlon, we called out how the “Triple-D” host’s unique position in American culture made him the perfect unlikely partner for a brand that was trying to activate relevance in a broader beauty industry that’s trying to win over a meme-friendly, digitally native audience.
Buc-ee’s New QSR Dam. The convenience store beaver that everyone loves is building its own strategic dam, er, moat, around its customer experience. Although Buc-ee’s has only 54 locations nationwide, it ranked as the top US quick-service restaurant in Dunnhumby’s Retailer Preference Index (RPI) QSR edition.
For context, Kwik Trip, which ranked second, operates 850 stores, showing Buc-ee’s ability to resonate with American consumers despite its comparatively small footprint. We definitely feel a certain way about the brand, calling it “the Harrods of the highway.”
THC Chaos. The deal that ended the federal shutdown includes a new ban on hemp products containing more than 0.4mg of total THC per container. With the typical hemp gummy containing between 2.5 and 10mg of THC, the industry is bracing for seismic disruption, including mass layoffs, production shutdowns, and billions in lost revenue. Senate Republicans argue that this move will help restore the “initial intent” of the 2018 bill’s passing. Since that initial decision, the industry has seen a slew of safety issues emerge, including mislabeling and untested products hitting the market. The global hemp market was valued at about $9.47B in 2024, while the US market specifically was expected to grow “significantly,” reaching $8.32B by 2032.
(Di)Vine is (Di)Back. Millennials, rejoice! Vine, the root of some of the internet’s earliest meme moments and major lolz is back…sort of. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is backing a “new” app called diVine that will give users access to a trove of archived Vine videos backed up before the platform was shut down in 2016. Users will also be able to upload new 6-second Vine videos, but with a major caveat: new videos will be flagged for suspected generative AI use and will even be prevented from being uploaded. While social media bigwigs like Meta and Pinterest are going big with their AI aspirations, diVine is clearly leaning into authenticity and the raw, unfiltered vibes of social media’s early days. The iOS beta test group is full, but you can check out the experience on desktop now.
Who Wants to Live Forever? Actors Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey have agreed to have their voices cloned by ElevenLabs so they can live on forever with AI. The company was initially founded to dub audio in different languages for film, audiobooks, and video games, and has faced some controversies over the years, including a series of “voice cloning misuse cases.” For example, a digital consultant was able to replicate then-President Joe Biden’s voice to develop a robocall to voters. ElevenLabs notes that new safeguards are in place to prevent the cloning of celebrity voices.
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