{"id":474,"date":"2025-05-08T18:30:34","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T18:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/ai-dead-brother-impact-statement\/"},"modified":"2025-05-08T18:30:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T18:30:34","slug":"ai-dead-brother-impact-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/ai-dead-brother-impact-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Uses AI To Revive Dead Brother For Impact Statement in Killer\u2019s Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1200\" height=\"630\" src=\"https:\/\/wordpress-assets.futurism.com\/2025\/05\/ai-dead-brother-impact-statement.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full wp-post-image\" alt=\"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.\" style=\"margin-bottom: 15px;\" decoding=\"async\"><\/div>\n<p>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 \u2014 and the video is just as unsettling as you think.<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc15.com\/news\/region-southeast-valley\/chandler\/family-uses-ai-to-create-video-for-deadly-chandler-road-rage-victims-own-impact-statement\">Phoenix&#8217;s\u00a0<em>ABC 15<\/em> reports<\/a>, 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&#8217;s trial.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In another life, we probably could have been friends,&#8221; the AI version of Pelkey, who was 37 when he died, told his shooter, Gabriel Paul Horcasitas. &#8220;I believe in forgiveness.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A.I. of Murdered Chris Pelkey Makes His Own Impact Statement at Sentencing (a court first)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cMs-_8etNts?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Despite that moving missive, it doesn&#8217;t seem that much forgiveness was in the cards for Horcasitas.<\/p>\n<p>After viewing the video \u2014 which was created by the deceased man&#8217;s sister, Stacey Wales, using an &#8220;aged-up&#8221; photo Pelkey made when he was still alive \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<p>In the caption on her video, Wales explained that she, her husband Tim, and their friend Scott Yenzer made the &#8220;digital AI likeness&#8221; of her brother using a script she&#8217;d written alongside images and audio files they had of him speaking in a &#8220;prerecorded interview&#8221; taken months before he died.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These digital assets and script were fed into multiple AI tools to help create a digital version of Chris,&#8221; Wales wrote, &#8220;polished by hours of painstaking editing and manual refinement.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In her interview with\u00a0<em>ABC15<\/em>, Pelkey&#8217;s sister insisted that everyone who knew her late brother &#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She added that creating the digital clone\u00a0helped her and her family heal from his loss and left her with a sense of peace, though others felt differently.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Can\u2019t put into words how disturbing I find this,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/EoinHiggins_\/status\/1919588854471745852\">writer Eoin Higgins tweeted<\/a> of the Pelkey clone. &#8220;The idea of hearing from my brother through this tech is grotesque. Using it in a courtroom even worse.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Referencing both the Pelkey video and news that <em>NBC<\/em> is planning to use late sports narrator <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/nbc-jim-fagan-ai-voice\">Jim Fagan&#8217;s voice to do new promos<\/a> this coming NBA season, a <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/ashlynnb.bsky.social\/post\/3loixmeafc22e\">Bluesky user<\/a> insisted that &#8220;no one better do this to me once I&#8217;m dead.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This AI necromancy bullshit is so creepy and wrong,&#8221; that user put it \u2014 and we must say, it&#8217;s hard to argue with that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>More on AI revivals<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/nbc-jim-fagan-ai-voice\"><em>NBC Using AI to Bring Beloved NBA Narrator Jim Fagan Back From the Grave<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/ai-dead-brother-impact-statement\">Family Uses AI To Revive Dead Brother For Impact Statement in Killer\u2019s Trial<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/\">Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 \u2014 and the video is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[191,192,177,193,194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai-revival","category-ai-video","category-artificial-intelligence","category-deepfake","category-digital-clone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}