Ashton Kutcher’s Bizarre New “Digital Twin” Startup Is The Most Terrifying Thing You’ll Read This Week (And He’s Dead Serious)
Look, I know we all have a soft spot for Kelso. We watched him fumble through the 90s in a leather jacket, we clapped when he punk’d Justin Timberlake into thinking his Ferrari was getting repo’d, and we collectively ignored the whole “that 70s show co-star legal drama” thing because, well, nostalgia is a hell of a drug. But Ashton Kutcher has officially jumped the shark, and this time he’s not just doing a dumb impression of a foreign guy. He’s trying to sell you a digital clone of your dead grandma.
That’s not hyperbole. That’s the pitch.
Kutcher, who apparently got bored with being a venture capitalist who occasionally acts, has co-founded a company called (I swear to God) “Pocket Godfather.” No, it’s not a mafia-themed dating app. It’s a platform that uses AI to create a “digital twin” of a person. Think Black Mirror, but with worse branding and a guy who used to be married to Demi Moore telling you it’s actually a good thing.
The pitch, as laid out in a recent interview that made my skin crawl, is simple: You upload a shit-ton of data about yourself—texts, emails, voice recordings, photos, maybe your Venmo history for that one time you paid for a pizza in 2018—and the AI learns your mannerisms, your voice, your opinions. It builds a digital replica. Not a chatbot. A twin. A ghost in the machine that can talk to your kids after you shuffle off this mortal coil.
Because apparently, grief isn’t complicated enough. We need to add a $29.99/month subscription service to it.
Let’s break down why this is the most chronically online, Silicon Valley-brain-rot idea since someone tried to sell me a $400 egg cooker.
First, the name. “Pocket Godfather.” Really, Ashton? Are we pretending you’re going to be the digital godfather of my family? Are you going to make me an offer I can’t refuse? Because the only offer I’m getting is the offer to pay money to have a glitchy, soulless version of my dad lecture me about the importance of a Roth IRA for eternity. Hard pass.
Second, the ethics. We haven’t even figured out how to handle real grief. We still have people texting their dead relatives’ phones because they can’t let go. We have Facebook memories that pop up and ruin your Tuesday morning. And now you want to give people an interactive, AI-powered hallucination of their deceased mother? What happens when the AI has a bug? “Hey Mom, how are you?” “I am experiencing a system error. Please restart the simulation.” That’s not closure, that’s a jumpscare.
Third, the data. You are handing over your entire digital soul to a startup founded by a guy whose most famous role was being a himbo mechanic. What happens when Pocket Godfather gets hacked? Suddenly your dead dad’s digital twin is getting spammed by crypto scammers. Or worse, the AI learns your deepest secrets from your old emails and starts sending them to your living relatives. “Hey, your dad’s digital twin just sent a message saying he faked his resume in 1997.” That’s not a family heirloom, that’s a hostage situation.
And let’s talk about the tech itself. We’ve all played with ChatGPT. We know it sounds confident about things it has no business knowing. It will write you a poem about a dog playing guitar, but it also thinks the capital of Canada is Toronto. Do I want that level of accuracy chatting with a version of my late aunt? “Hey Aunt Carol, what was your secret recipe for apple pie?” “The secret is to use a 1:1 ratio of sugar to cyanide. By the way, the moon is made of cheese and the Bengals are winning the Super Bowl this year.” Super comforting.
Kutcher is framing this as a “gift” to humanity. He’s talking about legacy, about preserving memory, about being able to ask your ancestors for advice. Which is cute, except the advice will be generated by a Large Language Model that has been trained on the entire internet. So your great-grandfather’s advice will be a weird amalgamation of Reddit threads, Wikipedia articles, and a smattering of your own text messages. “Son, the best thing you can do is invest in Dogecoin and never trust a person who doesn’t like pineapple on pizza. Also, you should definitely have a threesome in a hot tub. That’s what I did in 1942.”
Thanks, Gramps. Very helpful.
The whole thing reeks of a tech bro who has never actually sat with someone while they were dying. Real grief is messy. It’s awkward silences. It’s forgetting the sound of their voice until you find an old voicemail. It’s the pain of absence. That pain is supposed to be there. It’s the price of love, or whatever the Hallmark card says. We are not supposed to patch it over with a fucking chatbot that texts you “Good morning, champ” every day like a caffeinated HR manager.
We are already living in a simulation. We’re staring at our phones 8 hours a day. We’re having arguments with strangers on Twitter. We’re outsourcing our memory to Google. And now Ashton Kutcher wants to make sure that even when you die, you can’t escape the 24/7 content mill. You become an infinite, low-effort content creator from beyond the grave. “Today’s post from the digital ghost of Grandpa Joe: ‘I think the new Spider-Man movie was overrated.’” Please, just let the dead rest.
And before you say “but it could help people with terminal illnesses prepare their legacy,” I hear you. That’s the noble pitch. But we all know how this goes. First, it’s
Final Thoughts
Ashton Kutcher’s career arc offers a masterclass in the volatility of fame in the digital age—he pivoted from a goofy sitcom heartthrob to a savvy tech investor, only to see that hard-won credibility fracture under the weight of controversial public stances. The real lesson here isn’t about his successes or missteps, but about how easily the line between visionary and villain blurs when a celebrity tries to wield influence outside their lane. In the end, Kutcher’s story is a cautionary tale: Hollywood may mint you a star, but it offers no immunity from the unforgiving logic of your own personal brand.