Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the production, use, effects, and implications of the “Eternal Testimony” project, which is focused on creating AI-enabled interactive content based on the testimonies of Japanese Army “comfort women” survivors. Projects being pursued abroad that enable virtual conversations with survivors of wars or state violence with the help of AI technology include the DiT Project, which preserves the testimonies of Holocaust and Nanjing Massacre victims via AI-enabled interactive content. The “Eternal Testimony” project is the first South Korean project of this kind, and it was influenced by similar projects abroad. This project holds the potential to enable participants to undergo the personal experience of engaging in direct conversion with virtual survivors who appear as if they were with us. This could be of considerable educational value in an era when “comfort women” survivors are no longer able to offer direct, living testimony. However, this virtual content differs from actual conversations between survivors as primary witnesses and their interlocutors sharing the actual space and time of the testimonial act with them as secondary witnesses. Those who come to experience virtual testimonies cannot share the same time and space with the survivors and are, therefore, bound to become tertiary witnesses only as long as they manage to successfully conduct an affective exchange through an indirect medium of virtual conversation. The indirectness of virtual dialogue and the asymmetry between the witnesses and the interlocutor necessitates a reflection on the immanent problems of representational ethics that such virtual content presents.