A sheriff dead after an affair with his secretary a wife’s secret affair with neighbor’s teenage daughter ending in homicide, a coach infecting a cheerleader with HIV and getting her pregnant, are just some of the topics of viral (no pun intended) ‘true crime’ stories all invented by – AI.
Yes, you read it right. All of the above stories, including their hypersexual and grisly details, were the work of AI, and were sometimes so convincing that people would contact local newspapers about them, asking why they weren’t covering these awful incidents, 404 Media reported on February 13.
One of these gruesome crimes, that apparently happened in Littleton, Colorado, reached reporter Elizabeth Hernandez, who recalled that:
“Some people in fact were saying, ‘Why didn’t The Denver Post cover this?’ (…) Because in the video, it makes it sound like it was a big news event and yet, when you Google it, there is no coverage.”
And the reason why there was no coverage? It never took place. The 26-minute long video with the unnatural voice narration over hazy stills of a neighborhood that looked nothing like Littleton, was available on a now defunct YouTube channel True Crime Case Files.
As 404’s Henry Larson writes, the channel had posted over 150 similar videos in 2024, and after Hernandez checked with the law enforcement, they quickly confirmed that the murder was fake, and that the video was the result of using generative AI.
AI murder porn
Indeed, the made-up incident in question, titled “Step-Dad’s Affair with Step-Son Ends in Grisly Murder,” was among the most popular videos on True Crime Case Files, and others were no different in terms of disturbing, perverse, and violent themes with clickbait-y phrasing.
Specifically, other titles (accompanied by AI-created thumbnail images and fuzzy videos) included:
- “Sheriff Murdered After Affair With His Secretary Got Exposed” with 30,000 views.
- “Wife Secret Affair with Neighbor’s Teenage Daughter Ends in Grisly Murder” with 34,000 views.
- “Coach Gives Cheerleader HIV after Secret Affair, Leading to Pregnancy” with 10,000 views.
Of course, none of these things truly happened, but there was no indication of this anywhere on the channel or in video descriptions, leading many to believe they actually occurred, and sparking concerns. In his defense, the channel’s owner brushed it off as semantics, arguing:
“It needs to be called ‘true crime,’ because true crime is a genre. (…) I wanted [the audience] to think about why (…) they care so much that it was true, why it matters so much to them that real people are being murdered.”
He made half of the videos using ChatGPT and/or an AI image service, while for the other half, he himself provided the bones of the story, small details, and edits. He would usually post one or two videos per week and it would take him about two. and a half hours each to create them.
As to why he took them down and disabled the channel, he said it was because he had received threats. He also claimed to have believed that people wouldn’t watch his videos if they knew they were fake and that the competition was doing the same.
“True crime, it’s entertainment masquerading as news […] that’s all there is to it.”
Distinction between fiction and reality
Interestingly, the channel’s owner said he tried to get viewers to question the videos’ reality by using odd character names or adding bizarre details. However, the comments underneath proved to him that his lesson missed its target and there were a lot of people who really couldn’t tell they were a make-belief.
Here’s just one example:
“I’m 100% confident that sexual relationship between the stepfather and the stepson started way before he was 19.”
Meanwhile, the genre he used to make these AI murder stories was based on NBC’s weekly reality legal show Dateline and followed a simple formula: a salacious affair, some vicious crime, questioning of the suspects, and a shocking trial of a perpetrator in the grand finale.
As for the “true” part, this is clearly open to interpretation, and a lesson in not believing all that you see.
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