AI helped a victim speak at his killer’s sentencing

Digital resurrection projects — using artificial intelligence to bring back the likeness of people who have died — have become a trend for at least two years. And, as AI gets more advanced, so do the resurrections.

Most recently, Stacey Wales used AI to generate a video of her late brother, Christopher Pelkey, to address the courtroom at the sentencing hearing for the man who killed him in a road rage incident in Chandler, Arizona. According to NPR, its the first time AI has ever been used in this way.

“He doesn’t get a say. He doesn’t get a chance to speak,” Wales told NPR, referring to her brother. “We can’t let that happen. We have to give him a voice.”

Pelkey was a veteran who served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army, according to an online obituary. He was also heavily involved in his local church, and he went on multiple mission trips. His sister told NPR that he loved God, loved others, and would give a stranger the shirt off his back. He was 37 when he died.

Wales created the AI video of her brother in a few days, but she didn’t come up with the idea immediately. After two years of trying to craft a victim impact statement, Wales said she had the epiphany that the only voice that mattered was her late brother’s.

“Every time I’d get in the shower or the car and my thoughts were quiet, I wrote down what I was feeling — frustrated, crying or emotions, yelling, anger, love, anything that I could think of,” she told NBC News. “I’ve been writing it for two years, but I never had the idea to help Chris speak until a week and a half before this second trial.”

Wales also posted the AI video of her brother online, and you can watch the same video shown in the courtroom.

“Hello. Just to be clear for everyone seeing this, I’m a version of Chris Pelkey recreated through AI that uses my picture and my voice profile,” the AI avatar said in the video. AI Pelkey thanked everyone in his life, and said he and his shooter, Gabriel Paul Horcasitas, “could have been friends” in “another life.”

“Well, I’m gonna go fishing now. Love you all. See you on the other side,” AI Pelkey said at the end of the video.

According to NPR, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Todd Lang said, “I loved that AI. Thank you for that.” He gave Horcasitas the maximum sentence of just over a decade in prison for manslaughter.

This isn’t the first time people have pushed the limits of AI to create versions of people who have died. It’s a phenomenon particularly beloved by TikTok true crime fans, as Rolling Stone reported in 2023. And just last year, youth-focused gun reform organizations March For Our Lives and Change the Ref used audio “deepfakes” to “resurrect” gun violence victims in a campaign to Congress.