When I stepped up to the Real Baby—Real Family booth at the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference, I was handed a sanitary facial mask with a QR code that directed me to a survey. It was time to determine my virtual baby’s characteristics.
In no time, I was answering very private—and potentially problematic—questions on a public screen: “Do you want children?” and “What is your preferred baby?” (By this, they meant “what race do you want your baby to be?”—with black, white, and asian as the only options.)
It’s a bit weird for sure, but Real Baby—Real Family is at least an attempt to address a very serious problem. The birth rate in Japan is dropping. And the gap between the elderly and the young is widening.
The hope is that Real Baby might solve the declining birthrate.
“The concept is that by seeing your own face on this child, a lot of authenticity is added to the experience,” Jeremy Kenisky, 2017 chair of Emerging Technologies at SIGGRAPH, told me.
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“If you look at a lot of medical schools right now, they’re operating on dummies,” Kenisky said, “but what they’re doing is using augmented reality to put faces on those dummies so you can get a sense that it’s an actual person.”
Shirai imagines the Real Baby program being used in schools, hospitals, and clinics, for couples expecting and school children alike. In a sense, his team has reinvented and reinvigorated the egg assignment, with hopes for not only teaching people responsibility, but for demystifying and humanizing parenting.
Personally? I’m not sure if it convinced me to have kids, but it sure was hard to say I didn’t like Dolores.
Source: Vice