AI is being used to give dead, missing kids a voice they didn’t ask for

While TikTok has removed multiple videos depicting James narrating his abduction and death in Kirkby, England, many remain available to view on YouTube.

This is fucking ghoulish.

Does this constitute psychological torture? I’m serious. This is so much eviler than what Westboro does.

Christ. I already hate these people.

Stuart Fergus, the husband of James Bulger’s mother, said that after he reached out to one creator asking them to take down their video, he received a reply saying: “We do not intend to offend anyone. We only do these videos to make sure incidents will never happen again to anyone. Please continue to support and share my page to spread awareness.”

He really tried to take down his wife's dead kid's deepfake and got the creator responding "no offense, so like share and subscribe lel"

Using the likeness of another person without that person's express permission should be a jailable offense.

They seem to be getting a pass on using copyrighted materials to feed these programs so I am doubting that we would get legislation protecting our own likenesses, or those of our loved ones. I bet you couldn't even get lawmakers to understand what they would need to write into law. They (american lawmakers) all seem to be so up to speed on technology. /s
- Not until someone starts making clips of lawmakers narrating their own crimes and unethical behavior, then they'll get it done immediately.
  Not that I'm suggesting anyone do that...
We only do these videos to make sure incidents will never happen again to anyone.
Fuck this concern troll.

This feels so much like a cyberpunk story. It’s so dehumanizing and has such disregard for humanity that it feels like a perfect match for the genre.

I’m really starting to understand how old people get to a point where they no longer want to keep with the times. This is gross.

Keep summer safe
This feels so much like a cyberpunk story. It’s so dehumanizing and has such disregard for humanity that it feels like a perfect match for the genre.
We're ruled by billionaires that read (or more likely just watch) cyberpunk dystopia stories and say "based, I want to make that real."

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus

Anne Frank advertising baby clothes before discussing the horrors of the Holocaust

Wow, that is amazingly inhumane.

My first thought is they're necessarily making characters who aren't people. A person who has lived through the Holocaust just cannot cheerfully peddle baby clothes. I don't mean that it's physically not possible because she's dead: I mean in terms of the human psyche, a person just flat-out psychologically could not do that. A young boy who succumbed to torture and murder psychology cannot just calmly narrate it.

So obviously, yeah, it's quite a ghoulish and evil thing to take what used to be a person, and a figure who has been studied and mourned because of their personhood, because we can relate to them as a person, and just completely strip them of their personhood and turn them into an inhumane object.

But then that leads to me the question of, who's watching these things, and why? The article says they got quite a lot of views. Is it just for shock value? I don't quite understand.

Have you met the true crime community? They would eat this stuff up.
- I don't get them. Why would you keep watching and discussing this stuff? Have they got no empathy?
But then that leads to me the question of, who's watching these things, and why? The article says they got quite a lot of views. Is it just for shock value? I don't quite understand.
Once again the entertainment can claim to be "educational" or "informative" and piously claim it doesn't "condone" what it's presenting (for entertainment purposes) but "true crime" hogs will gobble it up and oink all the while anyway.

This is inarguably horrible but the use of AI seems irrelevant. You could make this same thing with any animation tool. It's the idea that's disgusting.

Do you think AI is mentioned because it makes the article seem more up to the minute and in keeping with current tech trends?

"A man drew a disgusting picture of a horrible event using pencils and paper this week."

"Pencils and paper are so awful."

If pencils and paper were actively causing a spike of worker precarity, a sudden increase in fraud and identity theft and misuse of people's personas against their will and without their consent, I wouldn't blame people for being upset at those fancy new pencils or paper instead of smugly telling them how actually
the technology in a vacuum with no one using it is actually harmless.
The ratio of effort to output is off the chart. Don't pretend you don't get it.
- Why does that matter in this context?

“Hello, my name is James Bulger,” says the image in one TikTok video, made in the likeness of the British 2-year-old who was abducted in 1993 as his mother paid for groceries.

“If my mom turned right, I could have been alive today. Unfortunately, she turned left,” the childlike voice says, citing what James’s mother once said was one of her biggest regrets: If she had turned right, she would have seen her son being led away by the two 10-year-olds who later tortured and killed him

Yup

The 2 biggest psychopaths join forces, true crime people, and tech bros

For fucks sake... AI continues to usher in a new age of human horror.

True crime shows have existed with real (paid) actors in mainstream media for decades. Certainly made more money compared to 'content creators'.
- There's a stark difference between reporting on or dramatizing a crime (often with family involvement) and creating deepfakes of dead kids to boost your social media presence.

This is eerily similar to that episode of Black Mirror...

This is exactly that episode of Black Mirror. The use case is different, but the concept is identical.

so fucked up

You will never be allowed to die.

🙂

Hey i know this one! Isn't a Black mirror episode?

This is some radicalizing shit right here.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Now, some content creators are using artificial intelligence to recreate the likeness of these deceased or missing children, giving them “voices” to narrate the disturbing details of what happened to them.

TikTok’s guidelines say the advancement of AI “can make it more difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction, carrying both societal and individual risks,” and ask that users who share synthetic or manipulated media showing realistic scenes include a disclaimer noting that the content is not real.

Felix M. Simon, a communication researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, said he was confident that the videos mentioned in this piece were produced using “one or several AI tools,” but could not say which software exactly.

“They appear to be created with some form of AI tools and bear some of the typical hallmarks of cheaper AI-generated videos,” such as an anime or comic-like aesthetic and polished skin, he said in an email.

Simon cautioned that the videos — which are often accompanied by dramatic or sorrowful music, or show children with scars and bloodied faces — “have the potential to re-traumatize the bereaved.”

Cory Bradford, a TikToker who has gained almost 1 million followers producing history videos, said that while he generally avoids using AI in his own posts, those who do are likely trying to boost engagement, especially on a platform where the audience skews younger.

I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.

true crime obsessed people are such scumbags

They don't condone what they're oinking to. As hogs, they're just informed and educated about the misery porn they get off to.

This just fuels my reasoning for not trusting us with AI. Raising awareness is fine and all, but re-creating a lost child only for them to tell you how they died is beyond fucked up.

It's not condoning child murders (or I assume that's the claim being made) but hogs will oink and get off to their True Crime(tm) misery porn anyway.

More of that asked if they could not if they should stuff

shivers

I was tired of this shit a while ago and I'm starting to outright hate it now.

We need to elevate this by creating an industry for entire robots of dead relatives. That we eliminate coping and allow everyone to live in a fantasy world forever

With sufficient techbro takes about how humans are just meat computers and that consciousness is just an illusion, replacing dead people with portable chatbots seems less disturbing.