Documentary filmmakers were publishing guidelines on how to ethically use generative AI right as Netflix’s true crime doc was adding fake images to the historical record.
Reading through these comments it seems that many lemmings have wildly optimistic ideals about ethics in the "true crime" genre of documentaries.
Even for sincere documentarians, presenting unvarnished history accurately and completely is an impossibility. For the bad-faith actors, you'd be amazed at how much is outright staged or otherwise faked. The only rule is that it be entertaining.
As far as "true crime", the question of "should we even make this" is pretty ethically fraught. True crime is cheap, popular, and stuffed to the brim with hacks and bad faith actors.
Yes there are re-enactments in documentaries but this was using actual photos of the subject. I def have a problem with that. It's exploitive at the very least and reminds of the AI shitshow to come. Disclosure should be on the damn picture itself, not in the credits.
Re-enactments have actors and no one confuses them for the actual subjects. If you dont have enough material, don't make a 'true crime documentary'.
okay, so, yes, its not 'true', and the crime its about didn't actually 'happen', but everyone knows' true crime' is a genre defined by its aesthetics and 'grittiness' and being very cheap to produce, so we here at Netflix believe we're being true to the highest ideals and aesthetics of the genre.
We call that bullshit where I come from. Either it’s historical or it’s fiction. Fiction can be done in an historical setting, but is never historical itself.
In the U.K. there’s a law (perhaps it’s an agreement between the broadcasters, no sure) to display a P in the corner of the screen when there’s product placements. So every time someone takes a phone out in a soap opera, the little P appears. Hilarious how ALL the characters in Hollyoaks chose Windows Mobile for a while.
Perhaps we ought to require the same for AI generated media.
Yeah I couldn’t read the whole article, so what I’d want to know is if the AI generated images were shown with a disclosure or not. Because that changes everything..
Edit: apparently there was no disclosure in the movie, which is the problem
If there was a disclosure, that would be fine. Documentaries used actors, reenactments, illustrations, 3D generated content, etc. before. If it helps viewers visualize the topic, it is fine. If it skews the story to push a theory of the documentary, that's not fine.
In my experience, most just read the headline. That's why the tldr bot is so important and most subs banning it are just doing the community a disservice.