Technology

You can create an AI avatar before your death that will haunt them on your behalf.

Yeah, that's a weird bit of writing. It's completely unnecessary information that adds nothing to the sentence. I don't know if it's the case, but this is like a micro-aggression where the author felt the need to add more info about the man instead of the woman.

From NPR:

…using several AI tools, Wales' husband and Yentzer managed to create a convincing video using about a 4.5-minute-video of Pelkey, his funeral photo and a script that Wales prepared

Emphasis mine.

It was after the verdict of the trial. This was displayed during the sentencing hearing where family members get to state how the death affected them. It's still fucked up, but to be clear it wasn't used during the trial.

Preface: This does not belong in a courtroom. These were not his words. These were words that someone else wrote, and then put into the mouth of a very realistic puppet of him.

This was a victim impact statement, which I think comes after sentencing. In that case, it wouldn't have had an impact on sentencing, but I still feel quite strongly that this kind of misrepresentation has no place in a court.

There were videos shown during the trial that Stacey said were deeply difficult to sit through. “Videos of Chris literally being blown away with a bullet through his chest, going in the street, falling backward. We saw these items over and over and over,” she said. “And we were instructed: don’t you gasp and don’t you cry and do not make a scene, because that can cause a mistrial.”

“Our goal was to make the judge cry. Our goal was to bring Chris to life and to humanize him,” she said.

If gasping at video of real events is grounds for a mistrial, then so is fabricated statements intended to emotionally manipulate the court. It's ludicrous that this was allowed and honestly is grounds to disbar the judge. If he allows AI nonsense like this, then his courtroom can not be relied upon for fair trials.

Just to be clear, they were fully transparent about it:

“Hello, just to be clear for everyone seeing this, I am a version of Chris Pelkey recreated through AI that uses my picture and my voice profile,” the stilted avatar says. “I was able to be digitally regenerated to share with you today. Here is insight into who I actually was in real life.”

However, I think the following is somewhat misleading:

The video goes back to the AI avatar. “I would like to make my own impact statement,” the avatar says.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. It seems that the motivation was genuine compassion from the victim's family, and a desire to honestly represent victim to the best of their ability. But ultimately, it's still the victim's sister's impact statement, not his.

Here's what the judge had to say:

“I loved that AI, and thank you for that. As angry as you are, and as justifiably angry as the family is, I heard the forgiveness, and I know Mr. Horcasitas could appreciate it, but so did I,” Lang said immediately before sentencing Horcasitas. “I love the beauty in what Christopher, and I call him Christopher—I always call people by their last names, it’s a formality of the court—but I feel like calling him Christopher as we’ve gotten to know him today. I feel that that was genuine, because obviously the forgiveness of Mr. Horcasitas reflects the character I heard about today. But it also says something about the family, because you told me how angry you were, and you demanded the maximum sentence. And even though that’s what you wanted, you allowed Chris to speak from his heart as you saw it. I didn’t hear him asking for the maximum sentence.”

I am concerned that it could set a precedent for misuse, though. The whole thing seems like very grey to me. I'd suggest everyone read the whole article before passing judgement.

Yeah a fiction has no place in a courtroom. If we can upload maybe we can revisit but this is just stupid.

Seems like a great way to provide the defendant with a great reason to appeal

I’d really like to hope that this is a one off boomer brained judge and the precedent set is this was as stupid an idea as it gets, but every time I think shot can’t get dumber…

The worse is everybody knows, including the judge, but they still chose to accept it.