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So I tried out Augmented Reality horror

SavannahCatGiannis

Active member
I tried out an augmented reality horror movie (if you can call it a movie). This is what happened:

1. It scared the shit out of me

2. I haven't slept in 2 days

3. I went to get groceries, when I came home it was dark, I was afraid to walk from my car to the house

4. I sat in my car for 20 minutes until I mustered up the courage

5. I grabbed all the grocery bags in one go and ran like hell to my house

6. Carton of eggs and a couple onions fell out of my grocery bags

7. The eggs smashed

8. I left the onions behind because fuck that

9. My boyfriend is working backshift tonight so I am at my mother's house

10. Can't you tell it scared the shit out of me?

Horror movies don't scare me. This did.

And I do extensive work with the technologies used to make these things at my damn job, I know exactly how this works. So, I can imagine it would scare somebody who doesn’t.

I can explain it:

I won’t give the name of it, just an overview, because I can see this formula being used in many of these things. The AR horror uses your surroundings.

First, I installed the app on my mobile phones. I have two mobile phones and I used both to show the coolness of it. One of my mobile phones is my own physical device, which is on a Canadian network, the other is on a cloud, and set up in the United States.

The thing is random in its timings, to add to the horror. A few hours later on my phone, I get a push notification that appears to be from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I open it, and am presented with a video of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaking about the sighting of a supernatural being in my city, which the government is trying to catch and contain. He is trying to reassure people. It is his voice, his mannerisms exactly.

On the American device, the same speech, only the location is the location on my American device, is done by President Donald Trump through a push notification that appears to be CNN (okay, they may have screwed up there, Trump hates CNN lol). Again, his voice, his exact mannerisms.

This is possible through AI technology, which can reproduce how people talk by being fed video of the person, and make fake speeches. Here is a clip explaining it:


Now, I could not get much further with the American device because it is not a physical device. The Canadian device I have in my hand, this is where the scary stuff starts:

I run out to get a coffee at a Tim Hortons coffee shop. Three hours later, I get a text message with a photo, of the supernatural being at this exact Tim Hortons.

I go to the supermarket. Again, another text message, the being is at that supermarket.

A few hours later, I get another one, of the being at my office. And more and more, of the thing at places where I regularly visit.

Eventually, the text messages roll in, with the photos of the being standing at landmarks closer and closer to where I live, eventually on my street.

At this point, I delete that shit... but I could not sleep at all lol.

Even though I know, this is done though using the location data on my phone and publicly available data from Google. This is not hard to do, probably the most complicated part of it was the speech by Trudeau/Trump, which would require extensive machine learning (it wouldn’t surprise me if this functionality is not available in all countries yet), but the rest would be quite simple. Still, it’s creepy as hell.

Here is an overview of how it works:


I won’t describe the monster for fear of giving up spoilers, but I can see this new technology making millions. Horror movies never scared me. This was a whole new level of creepy.
 
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