Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture and faith from the Antipodes.

AI/Robotics, Research, Science & Technology

‘Reborn babies’

Article this week on ‘reborn babies’ – very lifelike dolls – sold to people primarily for collecting but also purchased by people like grieving parents. See ‘Reborn babies’ niche for collectors, grieving parents – Stuff.co.nz. I’m wondering if the revulsion some people feel towards them is part of the ‘uncanny valley’ response to human simulcra noted by Masahiro Mori (see Greenflame · Robots: From tools to partners).

Seems similar to the article I linked to in Greenflame · Virtual babies aim to ease parenting pain back in Feb 2004.

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3 Comments

  1. I’m wondering if the revulsion some people feel towards them is part of the ‘uncanny valley’ response to human simulcra noted by Masahiro Mori (see Greenflame · Robots: From tools to partners).

    I’ve wondered the same thing too – I’m currently working on my PhD exploring the uncanny valley effect, and one of my research strands is looking at how people react to reborn baby dolls.

    It’s early days for my research, but I plan to link to any published findings on my website.

  2. I’ll check it out sometime. All the best for the research project.

  3. This is so weird…or is it? I just had to write a blog post on the topic because there has to be a reason for why there are customers for these dolls…and furthermore, why the dolls are given so much reverence and adoration.