A chatbot impersonating American Jennifer Ann Crecente was discovered 18 years after her death. With the character.ai application, Jennifer saw herself used as the “persona” of a chatbot specialized in video games.
An appearance on the Internet aroused emotion in the Crecente family. Wednesday October 2, 2024, Drew Crecente was surprised to discover a chatbot using the name and photo of his daughter who died in 2006, Jennifer Ann. In an interview with the media Business Insiderhe does not hide his pain.
“I find myself once again confronted with this terrible trauma that I had to face for a long time,” he tells the media.
The madness of personalized chatbots
It is thanks to character.ai, a platform hosting several chatbots, that a digital version of Jennifer exists. Powered by artificial intelligence, a chatbot allows you to chat with a robot which will generate responses as if you were speaking with a human. From simple advice to long conversations, the most famous chatbot to date remains ChatGPT.
But the specificity of character.ai is that it allows you to chat with chatbots imitating the personality traits of famous people. The platform offers, for example, the opportunity to speak to the digital alter egos of Napoleon, Michael Jackson or Elon Musk.
Above all, Character.ai has a feature that allows any user to create their own personalized chatbot from scratch. We can then share it with the rest of Internet users. But this creative freedom sometimes leads to abuses.
Resurrected via a chatbot
Using a photo from an old yearbook, Jennifer’s chatbot presents itself as an expert in video game journalism. After being asked by Drew Crecente, character.ai removed the deceased girl’s alter ego.
Before it was removed, it was reported that 69 people had chatted with the digital version of Jennifer. The father also asked the company to retain the chatbot creator’s information.
“I wanted to make sure that steps were taken so that no other accounts using my daughter’s name or image could be created in the future,” he told Business Insider. Character.ai has not yet given Drew Crecente any details on the origin of this chatbot.
Jennifer Ann Crecente’s Story
In 2006, the tragic death of Jennifer Ann Crecente raised awareness about violence in adolescent romantic relationships. At the age of 18, the young American was murdered by her ex-boyfriend Justin in the city of Austin, Texas. The latter was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Since then, the Crecente family has dedicated itself to the fight against violence in romantic relationships between adolescents. The victim’s father, Drew Crecente, founded the Jennifer Ann Crecente Memorial Group in 2006.
This organization aims to raise awareness among young people about the abuse of which they could be perpetrators and/or victims. She is notably at the origin of a program called Gaming Against Violence. Its objective: to use video games as a means of prevention against violence.
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