“GRANDMA LOCKED ME in an oven at 230 degrees when I was just 21-months old,” recounts an uncanny deepfake resemblance of Rody Marie, she recalls being hungry and crying incessantly, which reportedly led her grandmother to place her in an oven, resulting in her tragic death.
Another video shows six-year-old Carl Newton Mahan explaining how he murdered his eight-year-year old friend Cecil. “I am the youngest murderer in history,” a creepy computer generated voice sounds off. “I climbed up on a chair, grabbed my dad’s gun and ran back to Cecil’s house with the gun. When I got there, I said “now I’m going to kill you and shot her,” the video eerily ends.
While deepfakes have existed for a while now, causing political unrest and inciting violence. Technological advancements are here to terrorise you and keep you awake. This is the bizarre bone-chilling trend that has taken over TikTok. Videos on TikTok, which generally have no trigger warnings beforehand, feature disturbingly real-looking victims of true crimes narrating the details of their gruesome death and their ordeal before it.
Another channel brings to life a famous child murder victim Elisa Izquierdo, a six-year-old girl who was murdered by her abusive mother in 1995, and Star Hobson, a one-year-old murdered by her mother’s girlfriend in 2020.
With the advent of hyper realistic text to image, GAN and text to speech models, true crime fanatics can not only create a creepy experience, they can max it out by including the gory details as well.
While the stories are factual to an extent, the creators behind these videos take creative liberties. For instance, the victim we initially spoke about was Royalty Marie in real life, not Rody Marie as shown in the video. Tragically, Royalty, the 20-month-old Black child, was discovered stabbed and burned in an oven at her grandmother Carolyn Jones’ residence in Mississippi in 2018. Jones, aged 48, was charged with first-degree murder. The baby in the video was AI-generated.
Minor changes in the facts of the story and the characters are made in order to escape TikTok guidelines and avoid scrutiny. However, the makers try and keep as close to the name, age and events, as possible. A TikTok account, which goes by @truestorynow, had 50,000 followers and posted videos of victims and murderers telling their stories has now been blocked by TikTok
Where Does this Stem from?
This emerging trend is part of the overarching true-crime fandom. Critics of true crime have condemned the consumption of real-life traumatic events for pure entertainment. However with the explosion, exposure and easy access to AI technology which keeps becoming hyper realistic with each passing day, there’s no question about its increasing popularity—rather the right question is how creepy and horrific will the convergence of true crime and AI become.
These armchair sleuth-hounds and their obsession merging with AI technology will keep re-traumatising the people close to these victims. And lack of regulation to deal with such content doesn’t help either. Criminal Justice experts think that this growing trend is designed to trigger strong emotional reactions — a sure-shot way to get clicks. “It’s uncomfortable to watch, but I think that might be the point,” Paul Bleakley, assistant professor in criminal justice at the University of New Haven told the Rolling Stone.
The people who run these accounts not only tell the stories of well-known child murder victims, such as Elisa Izquierdo and Star Hobson, but adult murder victims like George Floyd and JFK. Critics argue that true crime desensitises audiences to horrendous crimes, but others believe that people can distinguish between reality and fiction and that being more informed about crime can actually reduce fear.
Where Does This Stop?
For a long time, acts of real-life violence have been presented to the public through various mediums, from crime publications to investigative documentaries. However, the true crime genre has gained more recognition only recently. The genre has gained popularity by delving into real-life acts of violence and exposing them to the public. While it has advantages like re-evaluating flawed legal trials and promoting critical thinking, the genre often exploits suffering, adheres to predetermined narratives, prioritises ratings over ethics, and manipulates public opinion.
There’s also a debate around whether popular culture inspires real-life crimes or if it’s the other way around. Makers of the popular show based on Dexter Morgan were accused of inspiring real-life crimes due to his likeable portrayal as a killer in the Dexter series. True Crime as a genre has grown like wildfire. However these TikTok videos garnering millions of views is not odd, as such shows and movies have been topping all kinds of charts.
Netflix’s ‘Making a murder’ has been downloaded over 211 million times, while it was also the most binged TV show in 2018. There are three dedicated true crime TV channels in the UK reaching over five million viewers per month. Experts believe that the fascination with violent and macabre true crime stories can be attributed to the puzzle-like nature of these stories, which engage our attention and provide a sense of excitement.
The wild popularity of true crime can also be attributed to the appeal of having a safe way to explore dark aspects of human behavior and learn from terrible things without being in real danger.
Another thing which stands out is that women make up a significant portion of the audience for true crime, with studies showing that women are the largest consumers of true crime books and podcasts. This could be due to the intrigue surrounding dangerous figures and the romanticisation of serial killers, which can be appealing to some women.
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