A Digital Twin and a Senior Discount, All in One Day

Gather 'round, kids. Let me tell you about the time I made a digital twin of myself, and it aged me forty years in about eleven seconds. Faster than the internet ever did to my generation, and that's saying something.

I was testing video platforms for work this week... seeing if one of them might be a good fit for turning our subject matter experts into video content without making everyone sit through awkward Zoom recordings. Standard stuff. Upload a photo, let the AI build your avatar, see what comes out the other side.

What came out the other side looked like it had lived through several recessions I hadn't personally lived through yet.

Screenshot of one of the avatars. My necklace was on point though.

I need you to understand the sheer distance I have traveled to arrive at the moment when a computer looked at my face and decided I was eligible for a senior discount.

So let's talk about distance. Because here's the thing... I actually have traveled a long way in this industry, just not usually all at once like that.

When I started in marketing and communications, my degree was in journalism and visual communications, and that meant ads. Magazine spreads. Newspaper layouts. Photographs with a camera and film. Things made of paper, where the biggest technical decision was whether the headline font was too bold. Web classes didn't exist for most of my college experience... they showed up my very last semester, almost as an afterthought, like the program wasn't quite sure yet if this "internet" thing was going to stick around.

It stuck around.

Since then I've watched this industry remake itself over and over. Print to digital. Digital to social. Social to "wait, now everything needs video." And now apparently we've arrived at "now you can make an AI version of yourself say things on camera so you don't have to," which is either the most efficient thing marketing has ever done or the beginning of a very strange new chapter, depending on the day you ask me.

And this week, testing the free tier like the frugal soul I am, I got my answer about which chapter we're in: the strange one. I have a working theory that the paid version probably comes with some kind of aging correction... softer lighting, smoother skin, whatever digital alchemy keeps you looking like yourself instead of your own grandmother. Or even the software making your least flattering features more predominant so you are intrigued by the paid version. (Tricky. Tricky, you physiological menace.) But I was testing, not buying, so I got the unfiltered truth. And it was humbling. Genuinely, sit-with-it-for-a-minute humbling.

But here's the part I keep coming back to. Even with the humbling, even with the slightly horrifying preview of my future self... I'm still excited. That's the truth of it. I started in an era where "going digital" meant adding a website. Now I'm watching tools build synthetic versions of human beings in real time, and instead of just being unsettled by it, some part of me is leaning forward going okay, but what else can this do.

Will I personally use a digital twin of myself again anytime soon? Almost certainly not, not after today. My ego needs a minute. But that's not really a verdict on the tool itself, because honestly, I think there's a real use case here.

Here's where my brain actually went after I recovered: our subject matter experts are brilliant, but they're busy, and not everyone wants to sit in front of a camera repeating the same explanation four different ways for four different pieces of content. If we hand someone an approved script... their words, their expertise, reviewed and signed off by them... a digital avatar could be a genuinely efficient way to get that knowledge out the door faster, especially for shorter or more repetitive pieces of content. The real character and real knowledge still has to come from the actual person. That part's non-negotiable. But the delivery mechanism doesn't always have to be a camera and a Tuesday afternoon they don't have.

So no, I don't think this technology is something to be afraid of, or something I'll pretend I hate for the sake of a better story. It's genuinely cool. It's just that somewhere between "this could be useful for our customers" and "let's see what my avatar looks like," I got humbled in a way I wasn't expecting, and it sent me sideways into thinking about my whole career trajectory instead of just the software demo.

The point is watching what's possible, watching how other industries are putting these tools to use, and recognizing that the world doesn't really ask permission before it evolves. It just goes. And we either go with it, a little wide-eyed and occasionally humbled, or we get left holding a newspaper layout while everyone else is talking to their AI twin. And don't get it twisted, I'm nostalgic and LOVE a physical book or newspaper in my hand, I'm just realistic it's not the only way.

I'll be over here. Wide-eyed. Possibly aged. Still curious. And still very much taking notes for work.