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Axios
4 days ago
- Politics
- Axios
Parents of Parkland shooting victim use AI to "bring him back"
It's been over seven years since Joaquin Oliver was gunned down at his Parkland high school, one of 17 victims killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in 2018. With the use of artificial intelligence, he just did his first press interview. Why it matters: Joaquin's parents are using AI to give their son a new voice, which they plan to use in their yearslong campaign against gun violence. In an interview Monday on " The Jim Acosta Show," an AI rendering of Joaquin's face advocated for "stronger gun control laws, mental health support and community engagement." "I was taken from this world too soon due to gun violence while at school. It's important to talk about these issues so we can create a safer future for everyone." What they're saying: Joaquin's father, Manuel Oliver, told Acosta that the "AI Joaquin" uses the 17-year-old's voice and his past social media posts and other writings to mimic his personality. The AI clone is also trained on "knowledge that is out there through artificial intelligence," Oliver added. What's next: Oliver, who co-founded the gun violence advocacy organization Change the Ref with his wife Patricia, said on the show that they want AI Joaquin to have his own social media presence and eventually address audiences in person. "Now Joaquin is going to start having followers. It's not Manny, it's not Patricia. He's going to start uploading videos." "Moving forward, we will have Joaquin on stage in the middle of a debate." On a personal level, Oliver said he and his wife cherish being able to hear Joaquin's voice again. "Patricia will spend hours asking questions. Like any other mother, she loves to hear Joaquin say, 'I love you, Mami.'" Yes, but: Oliver added, "I understand that this is AI. I don't want anyone to think that I am in some way trying to bring my son back. Sadly, I can't." Friction point: A Washington Post story said the interview sparked an "intense backlash" online, as critics took issue with using AI to reanimate the dead. "This sort of interview style can't possibly represent what that child wants to say in any reasonable way," Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in digital forensics, told the Post. "There are plenty of opportunities to talk to real victims and have a serious conversation about this epidemic that's happening in our country without resorting to this sort of stunt." This isn't the first time the Olivers have backed the use of AI to send a political message using Joaquin's likeness. In a 2020 video promoting voter registration efforts, an AI version of Joaquin talks about not being able to vote in the presidential election and his frustration with the lack of action to prevent more shootings. The other side: Oliver responded to critics in an Instagram video saying Joaquin "has a lot of things to say" and "thanks to AI, we can bring him back." "If the problem that you have is with the AI, then you have the wrong problem. The real problem is that my son was shot eight years ago. So if you believe that is not the problem, you are part of the problem."
New York Post
5 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Jim Acosta ‘interviews' AI-generated avatar of deceased teenager promoting gun control message
Liberal journalist Jim Acosta 'interviewed' the artificially animated avatar of deceased teenager Joaquin Oliver to promote a gun control message on Monday. Working with the gun control group Change the Ref, founded by Oliver's parents, Acosta had a conversation on his Substack with an avatar created by the father of the son, who was killed in the Parkland high school shooting in 2018. He would have turned 25 on Monday. Advertisement 'I would like to know what your solution would be for gun violence,' Acosta asked. 'Great question. I believe in a mix of stronger gun control laws, mental health support, and community engagement. We need to create safe spaces for conversations and connections, making sure everyone feels seen and heard,' Oliver's avatar said. 'It's about building a culture of kindness and understanding. What do you think of that?' 'I think that's a great idea, Joaquin,' the ex-CNN correspondent said. Acosta also asked questions like what Oliver's favorite team, movies and TV shows were. The avatar answered and often asked Acosta the question back, sometimes sounding robotic, sometimes highly enthusiastic. Advertisement 'Star Wars is such an epic saga. The adventures, the characters and that iconic music are unforgettable,' Oliver's avatar said at one point. As the two talked, Acosta's Substack live chat was littered with messages commenting on the unusual scene, with some calling it 'creepy,' 'weird,' and 'unsettling,' while others found it an interesting and even touching experiment. 4 'I would like to know what your solution would be for gun violence,' Acosta asked. The Jim Acosta Show 4 The avatar answered and often asked Acosta the question back, sometimes sounding robotic, sometimes highly enthusiastic. The Jim Acosta Show Advertisement Afterward, Acosta spoke to Oliver's father, Manuel, who thanked him for his participation in the interview. Acosta marveled at the avatar being able to engage with him, saying he was 'speechless' at the technology and really felt he was speaking with the actual person. 'I understand that this is AI,' Manuel Oliver said, saying he wasn't trying to truly bring his son back. 'Sadly, I can't. However, the technology is out there. I can hear his voice again.' 'He's a symbol of something that is deeply, deeply wrong with this country,' Acosta later said, referring to gun violence that's killed youths like Oliver. 'People give up, and I think something like this is maybe going to give some people some hope, that we should keep charging, keep pushing for this.' 4 People are brought out of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after a shooting at the school that reportedly killed and injured multiple people. Getty Images Advertisement After the interview, Acosta said Oliver should still be here today. 'Yes, I know that it might be a little startling to see one of these young people, a child like Joaquin, come back to us in this fashion, in the form of artificial intelligence, but please understand after watching this that this AI experiment is an expression of love from the Oliver family for their son,' he said. Oliver's likeness had been generated by his father using AI before. One example was in 2024, when an AI-generated message of his voice was used to call members of Congress to push voting for gun control measures. 4 Afterward, Acosta spoke to Oliver's father, Manuel, who thanked him for his participation in the interview. The Jim Acosta Show 'It's been six years, and you've done nothing, not a thing to stop all the shootings that have continued to happen since,' the message said. 'I died that day in Parkland, my body was destroyed by a weapon of war.' Change the Ref didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. Acosta left CNN in January and launched his own Substack in February. He regularly interviews progressive guests and remains a harsh critic of Republicans and the Trump administration.
USA Today
14-02-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
7 years after the Parkland school massacre, is America any safer from guns?
Manuel Oliver won't commemorate Friday's seventh anniversary of the Parkland school shooting. Instead, he and his family keep that tragedy alive every day. Oliver's 17-year-old son, Joaquin – known to friends as 'Guac'' – was one of the 17 people killed Feb. 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, the country's deadliest high school shooting to this day. The bloodshed at the hands of a teenager with a semiautomatic rifle spurred unusual activism from surviving students. Led by Cameron Kasky, David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez and others, they helped bring about the March for Our Lives, a massive demonstration and now an organization demanding lawmakers tighten gun laws. With the national media shining a light on them, the high schoolers spoke out and called for action. Gonzalez went as far as saying during a rally: 'We will be the last mass shooting,' a prediction that has not come to pass. Others like Oliver and his wife, Patricia Padauy-Oliver, have taken on a different type of activism, providing daily reminders of the devastating impacts of gun violence even as a nation largely inure to such calamities moves on after them. 'The American dream turns into a nightmare' Oliver said his family of four, which immigrated from Venezuela in 2003, had gained U.S. citizenship a year before former MSD student Nikolas Cruz, 19, gunned down 14 students and three members of the school staff. 'We had gone through all the stages of being an immigrant, and when you least expect it, the American dream turns into a nightmare, and there's no going back from that,'' Oliver said. Oliver, 57, and his wife founded a nonprofit called Change the Ref, which seeks to increase awareness of mass shootings and influence the social response to them. He now appears in a one-man play he co-wrote called 'GUAC'' – currently at a Washington, D.C., theater – that tells the family's story and how it was so dramatically altered seven years ago. Oliver says it's one of the many ways they honor Joaquin's memory and thrust the way he died front and center. 'Some families choose not to keep the tragedy fresh. We choose the opposite,'' he said. 'We choose to remind people daily – on many occasions every day, through social media, interviews, campaigns, art, theater – that this happened, that this is a reality that has been normalized in our country, and that it should not be that way.'' A new obstacle: Trump orders review of firearms rules The efforts of gun safety activists like him, the Parkland survivors and many others may run into a monumental obstacle in the administration of President Donald Trump, who a week ago signed an executive order calling for a broad review of federal firearms regulations. Experts see that as the first step toward reversing gun laws enacted under President Joe Biden and possibly going further in deregulating firearms. John Feinblatt, president of the Everytown for Gun Safety advocacy group, pointed out mass killings in recent years prompted legislators on both sides of the aisle to bolster gun laws, such as when Florida raised the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21 after Parkland. He warned against taking a step back. 'In the wake of the mass tragedy in Parkland, Florida, then-Governor Rick Scott and a Republican-dominated legislature enacted a Red Flag law,'' Feinblatt said, also noting that Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act weeks after mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022. 'This bipartisan action has helped drive violent crime to a 50-year low, which drives home the key point: Any attempts to roll back recent progress will only put our nation's law enforcement and families at risk.' Experts fear 'adverse consequences' of reversing gun laws Though limited in scope, the BSCA was the first major federal gun control legislation enacted in nearly three decades. It boosted background checks for buyers under 21, clarified what constitutes a 'federally licensed firearms dealer'' and forbade gun sales to convicted domestic violence abusers in a dating relationship. In addition, the Biden administration prompted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to strictly enforce regulations for gun dealers and also cracked down on 'ghost guns,'' untraceable firearms without a serial number that are assembled from parts. According to the Justice Department, the number of ghost guns recovered by law enforcement skyrocketed from 1,758 in 2016 to 19,344 in 2021, a surge of more than 1,000%. Nearly 700 of those weapons were involved in suspected homicides or attempted homicides. Robert Spitzer, adjunct professor at the College of William and Mary School of Law and the author of six books on gun policy, said he expects laxer ATF enforcement under Trump and the reversal of restrictions on ghost guns and at gun shows, saying those moves will eventually have 'adverse consequences.'' 'Most Americans don't agree with these things, but it will be below the radar screens of most people,'' Spitzer said. 'There's so much going on, so much overhauling, agencies that are being dismantled, etc., that guns are not the No. 1 issue for most people.'' Parkland, like Sandy Hook, was thought to be a game-changer The subject often grows in importance after high-profile massacres such as the one in Parkland, which Spitzer believes had an impact on the 2018 midterms – where Democrats regained control of the House – and the 2020 election of Biden, a longtime supporter of gun control. The students' stunning reaction shortly after the shooting, refusing to succumb to their grief and calling out ineffectual politicians, captured the nation while also drawing backlash from the far-right. Time magazine named them on its list of the most influential people of 2018. '(They) said, 'This didn't just happen. This is a failure of our leaders. We don't want your thoughts and prayers. We want you to do what you were voted into office to do, which is to enact legislation to protect people,''' Spitzer said. 'It had positive effects for those promoting gun safety.'' Now the question is whether those effects will endure. The 2012 slaughter of 20 young children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was thought to be the turning point in the long-running clash between gun safety and gun rights advocates − yet it resulted in no significant congressional action. The legislative gains for those seeking to prevent gun violence have been incremental since then, at least at the federal level. Tragedies still leave a legacy of gun violence prevention But Kristin Goss, a professor of public policy and political science at Duke University who has studied the gun debate, said the impact of those horrendous tragedies should be looked at from a larger perspective. Though no major piece of legislation came from the Sandy Hook rampage, Goss noted several state laws changed, organizing picked up, more people got involved and money started flowing toward the gun control cause. Parkland had a similar effect, she said. 'Each of these tragedies brought more people and more constituencies into the gun violence-prevention group,'' Goss said. 'I think what Parkland brought in was a very public platform for young people. They started an organization, they developed chapters around that. It was another piece of this mosaic of gun violence-prevention advocates.''
