Family Uses AI To Revive Dead Brother For Impact Statement in Killer’s Trial
In Arizona, the family of a man killed during a road rage incident has used artificial intelligence to revive their dead loved one in court — and the video is just as unsettling as you can imagine. As Phoenix's ABC 15 reports, an uncanny simulacrum of the late Christopher Pelkey, who died from a gunshot wound in 2021, played in a courtroom at the end of his accused killer's trial. "In another life, we probably could have been friends," the AI version of Pelkey, who was 37 when he died, told the jury and his alleged shooter, Gabriel Paul Horcasitas. "I […]
In Arizona, the family of a man killed during a road rage incident has used artificial intelligence to revive their dead loved one in court — and the video is just as unsettling as you think.
As Phoenix's ABC 15 reports, an uncanny simulacrum of the late Christopher Pelkey, who died from a gunshot wound in 2021, played in a courtroom at the end of his now-convicted killer's trial.
"In another life, we probably could have been friends," the AI version of Pelkey, who was 37 when he died, told his shooter, Gabriel Paul Horcasitas. "I believe in forgiveness."
Despite that moving missive, it doesn't seem that much forgiveness was in the cards for Horcasitas.
After viewing the video — which was created by the deceased man's sister, Stacey Wales, using an "aged-up" photo Pelkey made when he was still alive — the judge presiding over the case ended up giving the man a 10-and-a-half year manslaughter sentence, which is a year more than what state prosecutors were asking for.
In the caption on her video, Wales explained that she, her husband Tim, and their friend Scott Yenzer made the "digital AI likeness" of her brother using a script she'd written alongside images and audio files they had of him speaking in a "prerecorded interview" taken months before he died.
"These digital assets and script were fed into multiple AI tools to help create a digital version of Chris," Wales wrote, "polished by hours of painstaking editing and manual refinement."
In her interview with ABC15, Pelkey's sister insisted that everyone who knew her late brother "agreed this capture was a true representation of the spirit and soul of how Chris would have thought about his own sentencing as a murder victim."
She added that creating the digital clone helped her and her family heal from his loss and left her with a sense of peace, though others felt differently.
"Can’t put into words how disturbing I find this," writer Eoin Higgins tweeted of the Pelkey clone. "The idea of hearing from my brother through this tech is grotesque. Using it in a courtroom even worse."
Referencing both the Pelkey video and news that NBC is planning to use late sports narrator Jim Fagan's voice to do new promos this coming NBA season, a Bluesky user insisted that "no one better do this to me once I'm dead."
"This AI necromancy bullshit is so creepy and wrong," that user put it — and we must say, it's hard to argue with that.
More on AI revivals: NBC Using AI to Bring Beloved NBA Narrator Jim Fagan Back From the Grave
The post Family Uses AI To Revive Dead Brother For Impact Statement in Killer’s Trial appeared first on Futurism.
