NEW from me: The true crime fandom has just gotten a lot grosser. TikTok creators are using AI to post videos of real-life child murder victims telling the stories of their gruesome deaths. Technically, deepfake videos portraying child murder victims are in violation of TikTok's synthetic media policy, which prohibits deepfakes of private individuals, a spokesperson confirmed. But some of these videos are getting millions of views regardless.

Obviously, this is incredibly ethically dubious. "Imagine being the parent or relative of one of these kids in these AI videos," one expert says. "You go online and here's your deceased child, going into very gory detail about what happened to them." Like many in the true crime community, however, creators defend these videos by claiming they are spreading awareness for educational purposes and not disrespecting the families.

It also raises the question — exactly where does this end? Are people going to start posting AI recreations of grisly murders soon, in the name of "spreading awareness"? Honestly, one of the weirdest things about this: the creators try to skirt community guidelines by using diff photos for the victims. so often the videos feature kids of an entirely different race (like Junko Furuta, who is portrayed often by a white girl).

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