Clearly, the intent here is to advertise the device's video chat feature that will allow the user to have touching, memorable moments with his or her loved ones even when they are thousands of miles apart. I have no problem with this. Sometimes a traditional phone conversation or email exchange just won't do. What I do have a problem with are the ads themselves. They show these touching moments, but each one is obviously scripted by cynical advertisers and performed by actors; they fall into what robotic scientists call the uncanny valley.
Wikipedia explains:
The [uncanny valley] theory holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The "valley" in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot's lifelikeness.This theory can and has been applied to various forms of media, most notably the not-quite-human CGI characters in films such as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and The Polar Express. And now I'm applying it to these iPhone ads. If these commercials featured actual footage of regular people having real, spontaneous conversations, then I would not find them disturbing. Similarly, if they swung in the other direction, and were perhaps animated, they'd be just as acceptable. But as they are, I cannot help but be repulsed; they're are like the TV equivalent of one of these creepy Japanese robot girls:
(shudder)
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