[joshstrange]

This is just Mail Merge 2.0 and it feels just as gross as companies trying to pretend they send "personalized" emails when it's all automated. I half-expected this to be a story about a new approach to support/outreach but no, it's just the newer version of "Hey $firstName!".

It's astounding to me that the founder not only did this but then wrote a blog article bragging about it as if this was good idea. Clearly the customers thought this was real (as seen in their replies), I can't imagine most of them would feel the same way if they knew it wasn't personalized at all and was just a deepfake.

The bit about "I would clone myself to greet people so I could work in the back", is super cringe. I'm not even going to open that can of worms... I don't believe this is ethical at all unless there was a clear disclaimer (which it appears there was not). Lastly "the genie is out of the bottle" is a terrible justification.

[skmurphy]

I agree, he is just enlarging the "Uncanny Valley" now to include fake personal videos. The effect will be to devalue any video greeting in the same way that email is now suspect.