Appellate court rules that AI-generated video of a manslaughter victim forgiving his killer went too far
A man convicted of manslaughter in Arizona will be resentenced because an AI-generated video of his victim speaking from beyond the grave was ruled to have carried “undue emotional weight” as an impact statement. An appellate court in Arizona ruled that the manslaughter charge will remain, but the judge must reconsider the length of the man’s prison term because of AI.
To be clear, the victim’s sister, Stacey Wales, who generated the video, was in no way deceitful. She wrote her own perceptions of what victim Gabriel Horcasitas would have said as a way of expressing her impact statement, put the words in the AI-generated video of her brother, and she disclosed all of this to the court.
She compared it to the way courts thought of photography in the late 19th century.
“It took about 15 years […] and about five landmark cases in the United States that went all the way up to the Supreme Court before photography was an accepted standard to be used in the courtroom for evidence, identification, and testimony, et cetera,” she said. “I believe that’s what we’re seeing now with AI. It is a brand new medium.”