Selfie Time with Your Dead Beloved One

If you watched the Black Mirror episode "Be Right Back", this app might sound familiar. South Korean tech company Elrois introduced a new app called With Me to allow its users to stay in touch no only with living friends and family members around the globe, but with the dead ones too.

The loss of a beloved person is one of the worst things that can happen, until now death has been part of being human, the natural circle of life. The company claims to have designed the app for people who "are having trouble moving on" after the death of a loved one. Almost as good as the real thing: the app creates a 3D double of the missed person. It can be your favourite actor, your grandma, your ex, or maybe even your dead rabbit.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, this virtual recreations are able to interact with you almost as if they where alive. You can take pictures with the non alive and get the feeling you never have to let go. The representations are then able to recognize your mood on selfies, ask you out for dinner and tell you here and there that they love you.

The company says: “We think the avatars can be the new way to overcome their wounded heart with a good function of new technology. That also means it can be definitely used for various health care fields”. Maybe in 100 years we won't need any friend in flesh and blood, but just our immortal ghosts on our technological devices.

Homo sapiens are the only species able to think in fiction and live in an imaginary order. By putting the gone ghost a face on, it instantly makes it more powerful as visuality means reality nowadays. Closing chapters, saying goodbye and not having the option to carry on with something that might have been long gone is something people increasingly are having trouble with. Can a replica of a loved one really help? I selfie, therefore I am.

Source: The Root. Image: Daily Mail