In 2016, Jang Ji-sung’s seven-year-old daughter Nayeon died of an incurable disease. Three years later, the South Korean mother was reunited with Nayeon — sort of — in a virtual world created for a televised documentary.

On Thursday, the Middle East Broadcasting Center shared a clip from the special documentary, titled “I Met You,” on its YouTube page, with the footage cutting between the “real world” and the virtual one.

In the former setting, Jang stands in front of a massive green screen while wearing both a VR headset and what appear to be some sort of haptic gloves. In the latter, she and her daughter talk, hold hands, and even have a birthday party complete with a lit cake.

The VR reunion is, as you might expect, extremely emotional. Jang appears to begin crying the moment she sees the virtual Nayeon, while the rest of the family — Nayeon’s father, brother, and sister — watch the reunion unfold with somber expressions and the occasional tear.

“Maybe it’s a real paradise,” Jang said of the reunion in VR, according to Aju Business Daily. “I met Nayeon, who called me with a smile, for a very short time, but it’s a very happy time. I think I’ve had the dream I’ve always wanted.”

According to Aju Business Daily, the production team spent eight months on the project. They designed the virtual park after one the mother and daughter had visited in the real world, and used motion capture technology to record the movements of a child actor that they could later use as a model for their virtual Nayeon.

All that to say: the process might not be simple and the final product might not be perfect, but we now have the technology to recreate the dead in VR — convincingly enough to move their loved ones to tears.

And the implications of that are impossible to predict.

It may have taken an entire team of experts to produce “I Met You,” but how far can we be from a platform that lets anyone upload footage of a deceased love one and then interact with a virtual version of that person? Years? Months?

And what sort of impact will that have on the grieving process? Will seeing a loved one in VR help people find closure and move on following a death? Will some people become addicted to this virtual world, spending more and more time in it and less and less in the real one?

And will it stop with VR? Or is this just the first step to androids designed to mimic our dead loved ones in both appearance and personality, like in the “Black Mirror” episode Be Right Back?

Several startups are setting the groundwork for that future, compiling data about people both living and dead so they can create “digital avatars” of those people. Other companies are already building robot clones of real people.



The key to a VR reunion being a positive thing — that is, more like a twenty-first century take on flipping through a photo album and less like that “Black Mirror” episode — appears to be in the living person fully accepting their loved one’s death.

“Since you know the person is gone, you accept the virtual equivalent for what it is — a comforting vestige,” Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano told Dell Technologies in December. “There is nothing wrong or unethical about it.”

Perhaps regulation is necessary. Rather than letting startups offer the public the chance to interact with virtual versions of their dead loved ones — undoubtedly at a cost — maybe we can make the technology available only to people who’ve submitted to a screening with a psychologist.




 

I think it's a beautiful way to find closure. I'd love to do it.

Wow, I'm not sure how I'd handle it. I'd love to see my parents again, but I'm not sure I could emotionally handle seeing then not seeing them... if that makes sense.

I can totally see it being addicting though,  especially for a parent who lost a child (I haven't, thankfully).

This is weird. I once had a dream that existence was VR and when we die we take off the headset and are in this big place with everyone else somewhere in the universe.

@Only Lilly i love you but that is too much text for me to read

I would totally do it

My perfect world is where you cannot tell the difference between human and AI interaction; a place where imagination is key and thoughts become reality.

Would creep me out too much and death doesn’t faze me as it’s part of growing up but I certainly wouldn’t like to see them in vr! It’s bad enough seeing robins more and more when I’m outside smoking or working (my grandad was name robin) but yeah since he died I see them more and more, wether it’s a sign or I just look out for them more it certainly creeps me out

i think i would do it, especially for someone i could never say goodbye to..

A part of me wished I could so I could say goodbye to my grandad as I never got the chance to, but I feel like that would open up old wounds for me.

It is a great idea to find closure, but the project itself has so many limitations. It is easy to create a 'clone', but there is no personality and everything is not genuine. Even with the advancements of technology, it will never get to the point to which we can recreate a persons mind.

I think it is a great idea, but with the current state the product is in, it may cause more damage than good. We are all indulged with technology and virtual reality is taking over peoples lives. If this advances into something more, people will rely on it and will never move on. They will start to live in a virtual world, believing in things that are not real.

I am very creep out by this, yes it may be great for closure, but to me life is just a circle where you pass away and thats the end

No.  That would be flippin weird.  It feels too synthetic.  She can say things and the mom can respond, but she can't respond.  Technology will be good one day and people will be able to create VR/games that are hard to differentiate from reality.  AI is also on the way at some point or another.  But to create a clone that is indistinguishable just isn't likely to me.

This is weird. I once had a dream that existence was VR and when we die we take off the headset and are in this big place with everyone else somewhere in the universe.

I would totally do it

My perfect world is where you cannot tell the difference between human and AI interaction; a place where imagination is key and thoughts become reality.

That is the world we live in you silly geese!  Even Elon Musk thinks so!

Nope. Nope. Nope. Please leave the dead dead and my mind rest in peace.