The current most popular show on Netflix is American Murder: Gabby Petito, a documentary about the murder of the 22 year old by her fiancée Brian Laundrie in 2021. It’s a unique situation given that there is a wealth of high quality footage of Petito, who was filming herself and Laundrie in an effort to become a “Van Life” creator, which is something we rarely see in documentaries like this. It might be the largest amount of high quality footage we’ve seen from any high profile murder case turned into a docuseries.
There was, however, one thing that Netflix did that raised some eyebrows, using AI to recreate Gabby Petito’s voice for text messages and letters she wrote, trying to have it be in her own words rather than having another actress read them, as we usually see in programs like this.
There is a significant anti-AI movement in many circles, and on social media, there were a lot of negative reactions to this decision, among other things, calling it “disrespectful” to Petito and her memory. But there’s a group who did not agree with this, Petito’s family.
In talking about the decision to use the tech to US Weekly, a Netflix producer had this to say:
“We reached out to the family to get their blessing and then we worked diligently to represent it in exactly how it was written,” executive producer Michael Gasparro. “That allowed you to hear it through her own words…We thought it was really important to bring that to life. At the end of the day, we wanted to tell the story as much through Gabby as possible. It’s her story.”
It’s a unique case as this tech has not been this advanced in the past, in this instance, since the family gave permission for this to be done, that complicates perceptions of whether this may be “okay” or not.
Hollywood has dealt with both of these issues before, albeit usually separately. This year’s Best Picture nominee, The Brutalist, got flak for using AI to make accents in the film more accurate. Elsewhere, we see Hollywood recreate deceased actors for films using old footage or pure VFX (this has happened in Star Wars, Alien Romulus, and others as of late).
This happening in this way is sort of a first-of-its kind situation in terms of how advanced the tech has gotten, and again, the amount of footage from Petito herself no doubt contributed to the ability to do this. Watching the show, you can definitely hear how it sounds somewhat “unnatural,” but you sort of get used to it as time goes on, and it just becomes another part of the show eventually. Though no doubt opinions on its use here will continue to differ.
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