Former CNN anchor and chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta drew near-universal criticism for conducting an astonishingly tone-deaf “interview” with an AI avatar of one of the victims of the 2018 Parkland school shooting.
On Monday, Acosta aired a clip of him speaking to the AI, which was reportedly created by his parents, to send a “powerful message on gun violence.”
“I appreciate your curiosity,” the AI avatar of Joaquin Oliver, one of 17 students and staff killed seven years ago in a mass shooting at Miami-area Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, told Acosta in a robotic tone after being asked what had happened to him. “I was taken from this world too soon due to gun violence while at school.”
Oliver’s recreated face appears jerky and misshapen, an awkward representation of the 17-year-old.
Instead of sparking a meaningful discussion about the tens of thousands of annual firearms-related deaths and injuries that occur in the US every year, Acosta’s interview was met with widespread outrage.
“An animated skin put over a computer model and given the same name as the dead son of grieving parents is a cursed golem and a full delusion,” tech journalist Kelsey Atherton wrote in a post on Bluesky. “By interviewing the computer model, Acosta has asked us to accept this as true or real. Gun control deserves better.”
Acosta, who turned down an offer to continue his tenure at CNN in January in favor of launching an independent show, attempted to drum up excitement for the stunt by claiming his chat with the AI was a “one of a kind interview.”
What the former CNN anchor clearly didn’t predict was that his audience was already primed to be wary of tone-deaf uses of AI tech.
Observers on Bluesky and X-formerly-Twitter were quick to point out the insensitivity and obliviousness of Acosta’s stunt.
“This is absolutely deranged,” one user wrote. “This isn’t an interview, there’s nobody on the other end — you might as well have a conversation with your microwave.”
“There are several mythological stories on why this precise thing is bad and wrong,” another user offered.
“This made me uncomfortable,” one YouTube account wrote. “‘I’m not emotionally ready to deal with this form of AI.”
“Just passed two years without my Mom, and I can’t imagine using AI to make a video or photo that never happened,” another added. “It’s a really dangerous precedent to set for people who aren’t dealing with their grief and giving it more power over them than it should.”
Another user pointed out that “there are living survivors of school shootings you could interview, and it would really be their words and thoughts instead of completely made up.”
Acosta’s stunt isn’t without precedent. We’ve already come across a family using AI to revive a man who was killed during a road rage incident, as well as a storm of startups that claim to let you converse with deceased loved ones.
The parents of the victims of the Parkland shooting also used AI previously. Last year, they tried to convince members of Congress by using deepfaked voices of six deceased students and staff as part of a robocalling campaign.
Acosta’s interview was set up with the AI avatar by Oliver’s father, Manuel Oliver.
“I really felt like I was speaking with Joaquin,” Acosta told him in the video. “It’s just a beautiful thing.”
But whether those stunts will prove convincing enough to address gun violence, one of the leading cause of death for children and teens in the US, remains dubious at best.
More on gun violence: This $48M School Was Designed to Minimize Mass Shooting Deaths
The post Public Horrified by Jim Acosta’s Latest Stunt appeared first on Futurism.
