On February 4th, Netflix released a documentary about the infamous Lucy Letby. Soon after, it started to get a lot of buzz on social media, but not for the reasons Netflix was expecting. Apparently, to preserve the witnesses’ identities, the streaming giant chose an unorthodox method.
They didn’t use the usual tricks: altering the voices of the witnesses, shadowing them out, or using actors instead of the actual people. No, Netflix chose to digitally anonymize them by using AI. This decision caused an uproar on social media, with many people criticizing how uncanny, fake, and distracting the AI “actors” were.
Netflix’s documentary about Lucy Letby just came out, but viewers spotted an unsettling detail
Image credits: Netflix
The people featured in this true crime documentary didn’t seem very “true”
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Wanting to preserve the witnesses’ anonymity, the streaming giant used AI instead of real people
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They even altered photographs to change real people’s faces with AI
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The digitally anonymized faces sparked controversy
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Some people online called out Netflix for their weird creative decision
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User @lucyfairall made a video about it which led to a pretty interesting discussion in the comments
People pointed out all the things they found wrong with Netflix’s use of AI for this documentary
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However, other folks justified it as a means to protect real people’s identities
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