Technology

This is precedent now. Wheeeeeeeee common law system.

This is some perverse shit

To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,” the AI avatar of Christopher Pelkey said. “In another life we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness and a God who forgives. I still do.”

I find this nauseatingly disgusting and a disgrace that this was shown in a court of all places.

No, this man does not believe in forgiveness or a God because he's dead. He never said this, somebody wrote this script and a computer just made a video off it with his likeness.

Fuck everything about this, this should be prohibited

This is basically "Weekend at Bernie's", using the likeness of a dead man as a puppet.

This judge needs to be disbarred and have a forced mental evaluation.

nope. nope nope nope! Fuck this. I wanna go back to 2002 with Cortana whispering in my ear about fleet chatter and being optimistic.

That's not the world that unfurled though, and LLM's are not AI.

This marketing hype regurgitation machine "learning" can all go eat shit. All of it. Soooo done with the simps saying "oh but this application of the tech totally justifies burning down forests and guzzling water and power and totally wasnt trained on stolen, socially prejudice datasets"

Fuck that noise and while we're at it I'm entirely turned off by AAA media trends and current gen hardware too. Don't @ me, fuck a smartphone I've got a DS.

"gampa, did it hurt when you died?"

Hey there, buddy. That’s a big question! When people get very old or very sick, their bodies sometimes get tired, like a toy that slowly stops working. Normal people might go and buy a new toy from Amazon with all their great prices and exceptional customer service but your old gramps couldn't do that. When it’s time to go, it’s usually peaceful—like falling asleep after a long, fun day on a nice comfortable Saatva bed. I don’t think it hurts, because our bodies know how to let go gently. What’s important is all the love and happy memories we share. You can even go back and look at all our wonderful memories from the good people at Instagram. And even when I’m not here anymore, that love stays with you forever. Would you like to send some of those memories to your local Walgreen's to print?

I like AI, sort of. But this is ghoulish.

“I loved that AI, and thank you for that...” Lang said immediately before sentencing Horcasitas.

I hope they win that appeal an get a new sentencing or a new trial even. That sounds like a horrible misuse of someone's likeness. Even if my family used a direct quote from me I'd be PISSED if they recreated my face and voice without my permission.

Jessica Gattuso, the victim’s right attorney that worked with Pelkey’s family, told 404 Media that Arizona’s laws made the AI testimony possible. “We have a victim’s bill of rights,” she said. “[Victims] have the discretion to pick what format they’d like to give the statement. So I didn’t see any issues with the AI and there was no objection. I don’t believe anyone thought there was an issue with it.”

Gattuso said she understood the concerns, but felt that Pelkey’s AI avatar was handled deftly. “Stacey was up front and the video itself…said it was AI generated. We were very careful to make sure it was clear that these were the words that the family believed Christopher would have to say,” she said. “At no point did anyone try to pass it off as Chris’ own words.”

The prosecution against Horcasitas was only seeking nine years for the killing. The maximum was 10 and a half years. Stacey had asked the judge for the full sentence during her own impact statement. The judge granted her request, something Stacey credits—in part—to the AI video.

From a different article quoting a former judge in the court:

"There are going to be critics, but they picked the right forum to do it. In a trial with a jury you couldn't do it, but with sentencing, everything is open, hearsay is admissible, both sides can get up and express what they want to do," McDonald said.

"The power of it was that the judge had to see the gentleness, the kindness, the feeling of sincerity and having his sister say, 'Well we don't agree with it, this is what he would've wanted the court to know'," he said.

I don't like it, and it feels dirty to me, but since the law allows them to express basically whatever they want in whatever format they want during this phase, it doesn't seem harmful in this case, just gross.

I actually think it's a little more gross that the family was able to be that forthright and say that the victim would not want what they were asking for, and still ask for it.

The judge should have had the sense to keep this shitty craft project out of the courtroom. Victim statements should also be banned as manipulative glurge.

If I were the defense and scummy, I'd reply with an equally disturbing AI avatar of the victim saying that he actually killed himself and that the road rage guy was innocent.

I mean, seems fair.

I thought this was an onion...