Are We Leaving the Uncanny Valley?
There’s a hypothesis that when something is just too close to being human but also eerily not human we’re in a place called the uncanny valley. Do you know the feeling? A hot sexy android you’d nearly fall in love with except for the stilted expression? The level of pseudo-humanity in androids and some animations cause (most) human beings to feel revulsion, we get creeped right out. But are we now coming out of that uncanny valley?
Meet Emily – she’s not real. She’s a creation of Image Metrics and a new animation modelling technology that allows the capturing of minute details broken down under a control system. Not quite the revulsion of the uncanny valley.
The valley had a certain security that allowed us to readily identify humans from fictions. That security is trickling through our fingers. As a social engineering tool for good or bad this could be a powerful weapon in the arsenal. Marketers? Website interaction? Porn industry? How about video conferencing with your bank and discovering that all you did was converse with a piece of very attractive software.
From a computer science perspective I am in awe of our progress. As a web technologist I see the potential for the technology outside computer games. As a human being, I’m beginning to wonder what’s real. Emily in the movies. Emily at the service counter. Reviewing the Emily video, yes it’s still a little in the uncanny valley. But we’re leaving alright.
August 31st, 2008 at 10:51 am
Seth Godin has a short article on the uncanny valley worth reading. Great creepy picture of a person-dog.