AI deepfakes of mass shooting victims used to lobby Congress for gun control

It’s hardly we hear about deepfake content getting used as a force for good, but a bunch of activists within the U.S. will inform you that they began doing exactly that this week after they used the technology to lobby members of Congress for stricter gun laws within the country.

On Wednesday, exactly six years after the mass shooting at a highschool in Parkland, Florida, wherein 17 people were killed, families of among the deceased through the general public sent artificial intelligence-generated voice messages to House members who support the National Rifle Association and oppose gun reform within the U.S.

The recreated voices are a part of a campaign the parents began called The Shotline. Working with the U.K.-based creative communications agency MullenLowe Global, the group supplied real voice recordings of their deceased children and, through training with machine learning technology, create deepfakes to spread the message.

The people involved understood this could be emotionally taxing, hearing their lost children speak again, but the thought was to send something to lawmakers that will be rather more powerful than another sort of recording. “It’s been six years, and also you’ve done nothing,” said considered one of the AI-generated voices. “Not a thing to stop all of the shootings which have happened since. I’m back today because my parents used AI to recreate my voice to call you. Other victims like me might be calling too.”

This was the voice of Joaquin Oliver, considered one of the teenagers killed at Parkland. It’s believed 1000’s of calls were made to lawmakers through the web site on Wednesday.

“I died that day in Parkland,” went one other of the messages. “My body was destroyed by a weapon of war.… Other victims like me might be calling, too, time and again, to demand motion. What number of calls will it take so that you can care? What number of dead voices will you hear before you finally listen?”

The campaign also included the family of a 23-year-old who was considered one of 4 people killed during a 2018 shooting at a Waffle House restaurant in Tennessee. One other voice is of a 10-year-old who died within the 2022 Uvalde school shooting in Texas wherein 22 people died – including the shooter – and 18 were injured.

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission actually banned robocalls within the U.S. after Joe Biden’s voice was artificially generated and called residents of Recent Hampshire. The Shotline calls should not banned, nonetheless, because they’re not auto-dialed or made to landlines, and since they supply a callback number.

Photo: Heather Mount/Unsplash