Netflix has come under fire for using generative AI to reproduce the voice of Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old social media influencer who, according to the FBI, was murdered by her fiancé Brian Laundrie in August 2021. In the opening credits of the company’s true crime documentary, “American Murder: Gabby Petito,” which premiered its first episode on Monday, a notice reveals that Petito’s “journal entries and text messages are brought to life in this series in her own voice, using voice recreation technology.” I'm watching #AmericanMurderGabbyPetito and HOLY SHIT. They've used AI voice recreation to have Gabby Petito reading journal entries and text messages from the last months of her life. I'm assuming they got permission from the family, but this is a deeply unsettling use of AI. pic.twitter.com/uKd4bIFfBu — Laura (@editedbylaura) February 17, 2025 It’s an eerie artistic choice, even for the fraught true crime genre, that had audiences startled, with one user calling it “deeply unsettling use of AI.” “Watching the Gabby Petito doc, absolutely invested… until the part it started using AI to make HER read out her texts and journal entries,” another user wrote. “That is absolutely NOT okay. She’s a murder victim. You are violating her again.” Petito’s parents appear to have been an integral part of Netflix’s efforts to bring her voice back to life. “We had so much material from her parents that we were able to get,” filmmaker and producer Michael Gasparro told Us Weekly. “All of her journals since she was young…Fury Erupts After Netflix Used AI to Clone the Voice of a Murdered Influencer for a True Crime Doc About Her Death