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Culture March 2, 2017
The unnerving, satirical world of “Black Mirror” seems to be getting more realistic every day.
This is especially true now that a South Korean company is developing an app eerily like the one Martha (Hayley Atwell) uses in season two episode “Be Right Back.” Be honest – you were really relieved to see it wasn’t the RateMe app from Bryce Dallas Howard’s episode, right?
With Me, an app from Elrois, allows users to speak to avatars of dead relatives. You can even take selfies with them.
There is a catch – in order for your relative to appear on With Me, they would have to visit a 3D scanning booth while they are still alive, to create an avatar.
Unfortunately – or luckily depending on how you felt about that episode – Elrois’s technology is not quite comparable to the one seen in “Black Mirror.” Avatars have a bit of a robotic voice, and while they can move, pose and speak, they don’t really look lifelike.
“We actually designed it for someone who has lost in their family. That is for my personal experience,” Eun Jin Lim from Elrois told the BBC, explaining that she was gutted after the death of her grandmother to realize that they didn’t have any pictures together.
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“I cannot take a photo with her anymore, so in that case it would be great to use our avatars. I want to go somewhere great with my precious person and remember it forever,” she said.
When confronted with the notion that With Me creates “fake” memories, Lim insisted, “It is not fake memories I think, but it is 3D realistic avatars, and actual presence is in my mind. It depends on people’s opinion.”
So, with the terrifying “Black Mirror” version of our future in mind, this new app is relatively tame on the creepy scale. But… still pretty weird. I think I’ll just stick with trying to get pictures with all of my family and friends before they die.
