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An Army veteran shot dead in a road rage incident nearly four years ago appeared in an Arizona courtroom beyond the grave to address his killer – all thanks to artificial intelligence.
An AI version of Christopher Pelkey appeared in an eerily realistic video to forgive his killer, Gabriel Paul Horcasitas, in what officials believe to be the first use of AI to deliver a victim impact statement, ABC 15 reported.
“To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,” an AI-generated version of Pelkey says in the clip. “In another life, we probably could’ve been friends.”
“I believe in forgiveness, and a God who forgives. I always have, and I still do,” he added.
The 37-year-old Army combat veteran’s family created the AI statement using a previously recorded video, a picture and a script written by the victim’s sister, Stacey Wales.
“I said, ‘I have to let him speak,’ and I wrote what he would have said, and I said, ‘That’s pretty good, I’d like to hear that if I was the judge,’” Wales told AZFamily.
The message was well-received by Judge Todd Lang, who told the courtroom, “I love that AI. Thank you for that. I felt like that was genuine; that his obvious forgiveness of Mr. Horcasitas reflects the character I heard about today,” Fox 10 reported.
Wales told ABC 15 that everyone who knew her brother “agreed this capture was a true representation of the spirit and soul of how Chris would have thought about his own sentencing as a murder victim.”
Pelkey was on his way home from a church softball game at the time of the road rage shooting, according to a GoFundMe set up by his family.
It was not immediately clear whether the victim’s family received special permission to play the video in court, or how it was decided an AI video was allowed. The Independent has reached out to the Judicial Branch in Maricopa County for comment.
While the state asked for a nine-and-a-half year sentence, the judge handed Horcasitas a 10-and-a-half year sentence after being so moved by the video, Pelkey’s family said, noting the judge even referred to the video in his statement.
The AI victim statement was the first use of artificial intelligence in Arizona judicial history – and potentially the first for the nation, according to ABC 15.
As AI seeps into every aspect of society – including the judicial system – the U.S. Judicial Conference Advisory Committee said it would regulate the introduction of AI-generated evidence at trial to ensure such evidence would be subjected to the same reliability standards as expert witnesses, Reuters reported.
Arizona State professor of law Gary Marchant said the use of AI has become more common in courts.
“If you look at the facts of this case, I would say that the value of it overweighed the prejudicial effect, but if you look at other cases, you could imagine where they would be very prejudicial,” he told AZFamily.
Marchant, part of an Arizona Supreme Court committee evaluating AI’s use in the court, says the system is trying to address the issues “as proactively as possible.”
“The problem, of course, is there are so many different possibilities here, some of which are more acceptable than others. How you draw the line is going to be very difficult, but certainly the courts seem to be moving forward to try to deal with this,” he added.
English (US) ·