Reporting by XinZhiyuan
Editor: Yuan Xie Peach
The progress of AI and metaversic technology has made people begin to redeem the regret that "his life will be more difficult" and that he cannot see his deceased relatives again. Recently, Forza Motorsport players reunited with his deceased girlfriend's "virtual driver" AI in the digital world.
Death is not really a passing, forgetting is an eternal demise.
What would it be like to finally find a "girlfriend" who died in 2 months in a racing game?
A few days ago, Pluto, a player in Forza Forza, posted a video of himself playing with virtual driver "BlueDreams4207" on Tiktok.
Notably, the account once belonged to his late girlfriend.
Reunite, you are Already Drivatar
The story begins with the death of Pluto's girlfriend 2 months ago.
After the death of his girlfriend, Pluto tried to trace her footprints in a variety of ways.
You know, the famous racing game Forza Motorsport series has an interesting "Drivatar" system.
This system records the player's previous online opponent's action preferences, driving habits, etc., based on this combined with the prediction function of machine learning, the game can generate an AI that plays the role of an online opponent.
In this way, after the player is offline, the AI with the player's friend ID can act as a virtual driver. Simulate online mode in stand-alone mode and compete with players.
The virtual rider system gives Pluto the opportunity to find a girlfriend, but it's not easy to actually achieve a match.
Pluto has more than 200 friends in his Xbox account, and Forza Horizon's "virtual driver" mode matches opponents randomly.
In order to match his girlfriend's account, he spent nearly an hour repeatedly restarting the game.
In addition, he posted on Reddit asking for help: "My girlfriend has passed away, can I play with her Drivatar?"
Netizens have expressed sympathy while supporting: in Xbox's friends directory, the girlfriend is marked as a special friend, which is easier to match by the game.
Finally, the kung fu paid off, and Pluto not only managed to find his "girlfriend", but also played games with her for nearly an hour.
Before the game crashes, Pluto and his girlfriend "Ghost" gallop through the game, pouring out his thoughts and pain, but she never responds.
Player Pluto now keeps his Tiktok account private, and the videos are not available to the public.
But that's fine, after all, not everyone is suitable to share this pain: when the account is not private, a lot of suicide content has begun to appear in the comments of the post.
Is this the future of the metaverse?
In fact, people's behavior on digital platforms is increasingly being stored in the form of clouds.
Whether it's content that people post, create, and share on social media, or record high scores in games, it leaves a more lasting digital footprint on the internet.
In addition to the story of the Forza player reuniting with his late girlfriend, netizens also led to a tear-jerking story 8 years ago.
In 2014, a user named "00WARTHERAPY00" posted that he had shared an Xbox with his father as a child.
Ten years after his father's death, when he opened the Xbox again, he found that in a racing game called rally Sports Challenge, he still kept the record of his deceased father's game.
The game will turn the player's best score into a "ghost driver" in a simulated way, allowing the player to challenge the best record in the game.
He constantly competes with the simulated role of his deceased father, chasing the ghost of his father. But it is always reluctant to surpass the father's old best high score, lest the system overwrite the father's old high score record with the new high score.
At that time, Xbox also used this story as a script to make a touching video "Player Two",
For the story of finding loved ones in the game, twitter users began to reflect on the digital footprint and the future of the metaverse.
Players with similar experiences shared their story on Twitter: "My dad passed away in October last year, and we played the old version of Forza Horizon together for a long time. Dad would always run out of points and often ranked last, but the game level gradually improved.
After The release of Forza Horizon 5, my first experience was that my father's virtual driver finally appeared and played with me. I was in tears as I ran after my father's virtual driver."
Another guy said, "My daughter-in-law used to play Call of Duty Black Ops 2 with me on PS3. She couldn't press the handle after a stroke and died 5 years ago... I wish I could have a similar game record to reminisce about..."
One Twitter user said, "If something happens to me, my nephews and nieces will find me on the game line driving on the road in Mexico or the UK, and it's nice to think about it."
"This is a first-rate metacosmic event. Although we are physically dead, our digital virtual people will continue to live."
"That's pretty much the plot of the Ready Player One sequel."
"Video games always leave a lasting mark on us in unique ways, but that's just a separate phenomenon. It would be amazing if we could leave a clone of itself in the metaverse that was played to the best of its ability."
The twitterer, nicknamed "Born to Play Games," said, "If the game crashes while the protagonist of the story is playing a game like this, it's not the best of the year... So this story should educate developers to invest more resources and time in developing the game, and fully develop it."
The "digital ghost" lives forever
Searching for traces of deceased loved ones in the digital world sounds poignant, but with a hint of relief.
In the future, we may be able to become "digital humans" and live forever in the network.
And are you willing to be a piece of data? Someone might say, "I do."
Because even if it is gone, it does not really die.
In September 2019, 78-year-old American writer Andrew Kaplan agreed to become AndyBot, the world's first "digital human" to live forever on the cloud.
Kaplan has said he is not seeking eternal life, but to create an intimate personal experience for him and his descendants.
In the future, Kaplan's children and descendants can interact with him through voice assistants such as Siri, Amazon Alexa or Google Home, and even after his physical death, they can still listen to him tell the story of his life and learn life advice from him.
In July 2021, Joshua Barbeau, an American man, reconstructed an AI chatbot with GPT-3 after his fiancée's death to reproduce her dead fiancée, allowing her to live forever in digital form.
Barbeau inserted his fiancée's pre-mortem social media messages in his chatbot project Project December and provided some background information, and then the AI model could mimic his fiancée's language style with astonishing accuracy.
It is this chatbot that allows Joshua Barbeau to relive the beauty of the past in conversation with his fiancée.
In January 2021, a 51-year-old South Korean man wearing a VR headset was reunited in a virtual reality world with his long-deceased wife, who had died for many years.
In February 2021, in the same documentary series, a Korean mother and her daughter, who was only 7 years old at the time of her death, were also reunited in VR.
In October 2020, Kanye's birthday gift to his daughter-in-law, Kim Kardashian, was a holographic video of her deceased father.
In 2022, the first Indian couple to have a wedding in the metaverse world, the bride's deceased father also made a digital virtual person to attend the meta-universe wedding.
It can be seen that the development of artificial intelligence has enabled more and more users to digitally store their living habits. In the future online world, there will be more "digital ghosts".
Perhaps, in the future, human beings can live forever in the form of digital clones.
Even if this Forza player and girlfriend can run a lap in a racing game, they can experience the fleeting joy of a loved one again.
And are you willing to be that piece of data?
Resources:
https://www.gamersky.com/news/202201/1456490.shtml
https://www.gamingbible.co.uk/news/gamer-reconnects-with-his-late-girlfriend-in-forza-20220125
https://twitter.com/Gameonysus/status/1485497605945643008
https://gamerant.com/forza-drivatar-gamer-reconnects-dead-girlfriend/
https://thenextweb.com/news/planning-for-immortality-in-metaverse
https://westtnewss.com/2022/01/27/the-player-reconnects-with-his-dead-girlfriend-through-forza-drivatar/
https://observatoriodegames.uol.com.br/xbox/jogador-consegue-se-reconectar-com-namorada-falecida-em-forza