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Chris Pelkey was killed in a road rage shooting in Chandler, Arizona, in 2021.
Three-and-a-half years later, Pelkey appeared in an Arizona court to address his killer. Sort of.
“To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,” says a video recording of Pelkey. “In another life, we probably could have been friends.”
“I believe in forgiveness, and a God who forgives. I always have, and I still do,” Pelkey continues, wearing a grey baseball cap and sporting the same thick red and brown beard he wore in life.
Pelkey was 37 years old, devoutly religious and an army combat veteran. Horcasitas shot Pelkey at a red light in 2021 after Pelkey exited his vehicle and walked back towards Horcasitas’s car.
Pelkey’s appearance from beyond the grave was made possible by artificial intelligence in what could be the first use of AI to deliver a victim impact statement. Stacey Wales, Pelkey’s sister, told local outlet ABC-15 that she had a recurring thought when gathering more than 40 impact statements from Chris’s family and friends.
“All I kept coming back to was, what would Chris say?” Wales said.
As AI spreads across society and enters the courtroom, the US judicial conference advisory committee has announced that it will begin seeking public comment as part of determining how to regulate the use of AI-generated evidence at trial.
Wales and her husband fed an AI model videos and audio of Pelkey to try and come up with a rendering that would match the sentiments and thoughts of a still-alive Pelkey, something that Wales compared with a “Frankenstein of love” to local outlet Fox 10.
Judge Todd Lang responded positively to the AI usage. Lang ultimately sentenced Horcasitas to 10-and-a-half years in prison on manslaughter charges.
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“I loved that AI, thank you for that. As angry as you are, as justifiably angry as the family is, I heard the forgiveness,” Lang said. “I feel that that was genuine.”
Also in favor was Pelkey’s brother John, who said that he felt “waves of healing” from seeing his brother’s face, and believes that Chris would have forgiven his killer.
“That was the man I knew,” John said.
