YouTube personality Gabby Petito began documenting her life living in a van and traveling across the country with her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, in hopes of being fun, relatable and inspiring for viewers. Instead, viewers watched as Petito fell deeper into an extremely toxic and abusive relationship that, tragically, ended in her becoming one of the 4,000 women per year who lose their lives in a domestic violence situation they could not get out of.
Petito’s murder in 2021 sent a shock wave through social media. From following the case as she was first designated a missing person, then ultimately being found dead and finally culminating in Laundrie — her fiancé by this point — confessing to killing her after taking his own life.
The high profile nature of Petito’s case caught the eye of Netflix, which released their latest docuseries “American Murder: Gabby Petito” on Feb. 17.
True crime documentaries are always a massive hit, Petito’s story being no different. The docuseries became the most popular show across Netflix following its release. As viewers began streaming the series, however, some red flags were raised.
As the investigation unfolds throughout the series, Petito’s personal diary entries recounting the unraveling of her relationship with Laundrie become crucial to understanding the timeline of events. But what left some viewers with a bad taste in their mouths was the show’s use of generative AI to recreate Petito’s voice reading out her own diary.
Producer on the series Michael Gasparro stated that the use of voice recreation technology was an attempt to “tell the story through Gabby as much as possible.” While this sounds fine on surface level, this still does not sit right with me at all.
Petito’s life was taken away from her in one of the most heartbreaking ways imaginable and using AI to recreate her voice for the sake of making the television show more intriguing, feels so exploitative and gross.
Having watched the show, I think it was also just completely unnecessary. I don’t think it added anything of substantial value and in fact just kind of cheapened what is an extremely heavy topic to be discussing.
Although I will admit I do frequently watch and enjoy them, there are already a lot of ethical questions that can be raised in making docuseries like these. The use of AI in the case of Petito’s story just made those gray areas even more apparent.
Petito’s life was taken away from her in one of the most heartbreaking ways imaginable and using AI to recreate her voice for the sake of making the television show more intriguing, feels so exploitative and gross.
I think there are so many different ways the diary entries could have been included in the series that don’t involve AI in any way. For example, her parents, who too expressed discomfort with the AI-generated version of their daughter’s voice, could have read the entries out.
I am largely of the opinion that we’ve reached an impasse with AI where we sort have to accept it for what it is, but there is definitely a time and place for it to be used. I do not think Petito’s already incredibly vulnerable story was that time nor place.
President of the Center for AI and Digital Policy Merve Hickok said it best: “Just because there is new technology in town doesn’t mean that it has to be used for such purposes.”
mkane10@ramapo.edu
Featured photo courtesy of @gabspetito, Instagram
