Netflix is under scrutiny on microblogging platform X and TikTok for using artificial intelligence (AI) to recreate the voice of Gabby Petito in the platform’s recent series, “American Murder: Gabby Petito.”
The decision has caused an uproar among users on these platforms after it became evident in the first episode of the series, with some users asking how ethical it is to use AI to digitally reconstruct the voice of a murder victim.
Netflix is under fire as Gabby Petito’s story comes to life
The docuseries, which has three parts features the story of a travel blogger, Gabby Petito, who went missing while she was on a cross-country trip with her fiance, Brian Laundries. The authorities later found Petito’s body, with evidence of strangulation, declaring her fiance, who had since vanished, a person of interest in the case. Weeks after the declaration, his body was found in a nature reserve in Florida, where he confessed to killing Gabby in a suicide note found beside him.
According to a disclaimer shared by Netflix before the first episode the story was brought to life in the series using Gabby’s voice, via voice recreation technology. The AI voice narrated the journal writings from the beginning of the docu-series, and will likely narrate it to the end.
According to the director and executive producers of the series, Julia Willoughby Nason and Michael Gasparro, they received permission from her parents to use the technology. “We had so much material from her parents… all of her journals since she was young. She documented her trips and most of her life. We thought it was really important to bring that to life,” they said.
According to reports, a video condemning the decision garnered over 1.5 million views in 24 hours, with users mentioning that using AI was a step too far for the platform. Some people mentioned that her voice was publicly available in her videos and they could’ve used it instead.
Gabby’s mother, Nichole Schmidt mentioned that hearing the AI-generated voice was difficult for the family, saying, “I think it’s weird… because we know her actual voice. It’s a little off. It’s just hard to hear.”
In 2021, Netflix faced the same criticism for recreating Anthony Bourdain’s voice using artificial intelligence in the movie “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain”. The Director of that film, Morgan Neville, later admitted to using AI voice cloning, telling The New Yorker, “Viewers probably don’t know which lines are spoken by the AI model.”