Did Black Mirror: Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too come true?
Largely, yes. Black Mirror: Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too (2019) has a P(n) of 75% on Nearfi's P(n) Board, our estimate of the chance its future arrives within 20 years. Of its 4 tracked predictions, 2 have arrived and 1 are arriving. Its central premise, 'A mass-market toy talks to children in the voice and personality of a famous pop star', is partly here. The next prediction is estimated to arrive around 2030.
Stage avatars of musicians and AI-made pop acts are already here, and talking AI toys for children are on sale and under scrutiny. The episode's central device, a whole person's mind copied into a toy and mined for songs, has no credible path.
Read the review · 6.3/10 →
How this P(n) was calculated
P(n) is the chance that this work's future arrives within 20 years, by 2046. For each prediction we turn our estimate into a probability: arrived is 100%, diverged is 0%, and otherwise the low end of our 80% range counts as a 10% chance, the median year 50% and the high end 90%. Each prediction is weighted 1–5 by how pivotal it is to the story, and P(n) is the weighted average. P50 does the same by 2076. P(n), explained.
| Claim | Prediction · why this weight | Weight | Status · estimate | By 2046 | By 2076 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RJA-1 | A mass-market toy talks to children in the voice and personality of a famous pop star. Core premise: Ashley Too, the doll that befriends Rachel, is the object the whole story is built around. |
5 | ARRIVING 2030 (2027–2040) | 96% | 100% |
| RJA-2 | A digital version of a pop act performs full concerts on stage in place of the performers themselves. Major: Ashley Eternal, the hologram built to replace Ashley O, drives the final act and the story's villainy. |
4 | ARRIVED arrived 2022 | 100% | 100% |
| RJA-3 | A person's whole mind is copied into a toy, and their brain activity is mined to generate new songs in their style. Major: the twist that Ashley Too holds Ashley O's mind, and that her brain is mined for songs, powers the second half. |
4 | FAR 2090 (2060–2130) | 6% | 31% |
| RJA-4 | A record label signs and promotes an artificial pop act, with the music made by software. Supporting: the label's manufactured star is the world the story satirises, though the plot turns on the doll and the coma. |
3 | ARRIVED arrived 2025 | 100% | 100% |
| P(n) = P20 = Σ(weight × chance by 2046) ÷ Σ weight = 12.0 ÷ 16 = 75% | |||||
| P50 = 13.3 ÷ 16 = 83% | |||||
Already here today (arrived 1, arriving ½, weighted): 59%.
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RJA-1
A mass-market toy talks to children in the voice and personality of a famous pop star.
Weight 5/5 · Core premise: Ashley Too, the doll that befriends Rachel, is the object the whole story is built around.
AI chatbots in the likeness of celebrities launched in 2023 and were withdrawn within a year for lack of interest. Chatbot toys for children are on sale, and one was pulled in 2025 after testers got unsafe answers. Mattel postponed its first OpenAI toy in December 2025. A licensed star-voiced companion doll is technically easy; safety and demand are the open questions. 123
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RJA-2
A digital version of a pop act performs full concerts on stage in place of the performers themselves.
Weight 4/5 · Major: Ashley Eternal, the hologram built to replace Ashley O, drives the final act and the story's villainy.
ABBA Voyage opened in London in May 2022: digital avatars of the four members, built with motion capture, perform with a live band in a purpose-built arena. They are avatars on a screen rather than true holograms, and the band took part. Earlier hologram-style appearances of dead artists were shorter. The unconsented version in the episode is a legal and ethical question rather than a technical one. 45
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RJA-3
A person's whole mind is copied into a toy, and their brain activity is mined to generate new songs in their style.
Weight 4/5 · Major: the twist that Ashley Too holds Ashley O's mind, and that her brain is mined for songs, powers the second half.
Researchers have reconstructed a recognisable but muffled song, Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall', from electrodes on the brains of listening epilepsy patients. That decodes what someone hears. Nothing exists that copies a mind or reads out new music from someone's head, and the study needed surgical implants. 67
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RJA-4
A record label signs and promotes an artificial pop act, with the music made by software.
Weight 3/5 · Supporting: the label's manufactured star is the world the story satirises, though the plot turns on the doll and the coma.
In 2025 Hallwood Media signed Xania Monet, an AI-generated R&B act, in a deal reported at about $3 million, and she became the first AI-powered artist reported on a Billboard airplay chart. A human writer makes the songs with the AI tool Suno. Unlike the episode, the act is not a copy of a real star, and the law is moving to protect real voices. 8910
- AGAINST Apparently, no one wanted to talk to Meta's 'creepy' AI celebrities. Digital Trends, 2024-08-01. Meta shut its celebrity chatbots, launched September 2023, in under a year; they drew a small fraction of the celebrities' followers.
- FOR Sales of AI-enabled teddy bear suspended after it gave advice on BDSM sex and where to find knives. CNN via CTV News, 2025-11-19. A chatbot-equipped toy bear, FoloToy's Kumma, was on sale before its sales were suspended; shows both that talking AI toys exist and that safety is unresolved.
- CONTEXT EIE Commends Mattel for Delaying Release of AI Toys. Enough Is Enough, 2025-12-18. Advocacy group welcomes Mattel's delay of its AI toy for the 2025 holiday season and urges toymakers to wait until chatbots are proven safe for children.
- FOR ABBA Voyage. Wikipedia. Opened 26 May 2022; avatars made by Industrial Light & Magic from motion capture; more than four million visitors reported by April 2026.
- FOR ABBA Live in London: Voyage show review. The National, 2022-05-26. Review of the opening night of the avatar concert.
- AGAINST Music can be reconstructed from human auditory cortex activity using nonlinear decoding models. PLOS Biology, 2023-08-15. Decoding of a song a patient was hearing from implanted electrodes; the closest real work to extracting music from a brain.
- CONTEXT Neuroscientists Re-create Pink Floyd Song from Listeners' Brain Activity. Scientific American. Plain-language account of the same study and its limits.
- FOR AI artist Xania Monet signs $3 million record deal with Hallwood Media. The Decoder. Reports the signing; the figure is attributed to Billboard.
- FOR Xania Monet is the first AI-powered artist to debut on a Billboard airplay chart. CTV News. Chart debut for an AI-powered act.
- AGAINST Tennessee Enacts ELVIS Act, First-Of-Its-Kind Protection For Musicians Against AI Abuse. Pollstar, 2024-03-22. Signed 21 March 2024; adds AI simulations of a recognisable voice to Tennessee's personal-rights law, with civil and criminal remedies.
Ledger updated 7 Nov 2026. All works on the P(n) Board · Method