Speaker 1: This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to kf
Speaker 1: I AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on
Speaker 1: demand on the iHeartRadio app. The teenage carjacking gangs that
Speaker 1: are trying to live out a real life grand theft
Speaker 1: auto that will be part of our True Crime Tuesday.
Speaker 1: And then a teenager, a high schooler, was murdered and
Speaker 1: her image was used to create an AI chatbot that
Speaker 1: was eventually found by her father. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: strange case coming up as part of True Crime Tuesday.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love when we do these wellness stories and people
Speaker 1: call in and go absolutely yes.
Speaker 3: Hey.
Speaker 4: Gary used to work as a personal trainer starting about
Speaker 4: twenty fourteen for a elderly community. The people that dance
Speaker 4: always did a lot better than everyone else. And these
Speaker 4: are people that have just been dancing on and off
Speaker 4: their entire life and not professionally, just moving and shaking.
Speaker 4: Had better balance, better mental clarity, better strength, better endurance. Yeah,
Speaker 4: just even look younger.
Speaker 1: So keeping Yeah, absolutely, that's very very cool. And then
Speaker 1: in terms of eating.
Speaker 5: Late bake, Gary, No, Shannon, my diet is a deadly diet.
Speaker 5: I don't have breakfast. I just have a monster in
Speaker 5: the morning, maybe a banana. At lunch around one, I
Speaker 5: usually have like four tacos.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: And then at night whatever my wife cooks, and then
Speaker 5: well my wife goes to sleep. I have munchies between
Speaker 5: nine and midnight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, diety, None of that is approved by your doctor.
Speaker 1: I can assure you, all right, What else is going on?
Speaker 2: Time for what's happening?
Speaker 1: The weather that caused so many problems in Kentucky over
Speaker 1: the weekend is getting worse. Governor Andy Basher said the
Speaker 1: two additional people, an adult man an adult woman, appear
Speaker 1: to have been homeless, have died for hypothermia. That's on
Speaker 1: top of the twelve others who died as a result
Speaker 1: of flooding in the state, including a mother and her
Speaker 1: seven year old whose car was swept away in Hart County, Kentucky, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: They are applying for individual assistance from FEMA. The governor
Speaker 1: of Kentucky did say that President Trump has declared an
Speaker 1: emergency disaster area for the state of Kentucky, and on
Speaker 1: top of that, snow and now freezing conditions. A total
Speaker 1: of about two to six inches of snow possible throughout
Speaker 1: western and central Kentucky tonight until tomorrow. The storm is
Speaker 1: expected to create hazardous travel conditions because of slick roads,
Speaker 1: poor visibility, and of course, disrupt the recovery efforts from
Speaker 1: the floods. Still a few thousand people without power in
Speaker 1: the state of Kentucky, but it is much better than
Speaker 1: it was yesterday at this time. International news today is
Speaker 1: that Hamas has confirmed it will release ten hostages, six
Speaker 1: of them alive, this week. They said they'll at least
Speaker 1: the dead bodies of four Israeli hostages, including the two
Speaker 1: youngest held by the group, a nine month old and
Speaker 1: a four year old and her there mother, among others.
Speaker 1: The group also said they'll release six living hostages instead
Speaker 1: of the three that had been expected. Israeli Prime Minister's
Speaker 1: office confirmed that an agreement had been reached for four
Speaker 1: slain hostages to be handed over on Thursday, six living
Speaker 1: hostages to be released on Saturday. The bodies, like I said,
Speaker 1: included the Beepst children, just nine months and four years old,
Speaker 1: respectively when they were kidnapped back on October seventh, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. Hamas claims that they were killed in an
Speaker 1: Israeli air strike. Also today, historic in the LA Unified
Speaker 1: School District. Cell phone ban is now in effect. That
Speaker 1: includes smart watches and smart glasses. Because you're anyway, you
Speaker 1: don't need them, and despite what everybody's been saying, the
Speaker 1: chance insais of there being a safety issue are minuscule.
Speaker 1: Starting today as well, many writers need to tap their
Speaker 1: transit cards in order to get off the La Union
Speaker 1: station or get out of I should say. In the
Speaker 1: latest effort by La Metro to curb crime crack down
Speaker 1: on the fair evaders, writers need to tap their cards
Speaker 1: at a turnstile when they exit the subway and head
Speaker 1: upstairs to the main concourse. Those who paid ahead of
Speaker 1: time will be able to exit seamlessly. If you didn't,
Speaker 1: you could be stopped at the gates and face the
Speaker 1: possibility of receiving a warning recitation or even you get
Speaker 1: kicked out of the subway completely. If you didn't pay initially,
Speaker 1: but you do have a valid tap card when you exit,
Speaker 1: the fare would be deducted when you leave. Metro officials
Speaker 1: said it's still a violation of the code of conduct.
Speaker 1: Writers of Metrolink can already scan their ticket to enable
Speaker 1: the free transfers on La Metro, but you also need
Speaker 1: to scan again when you exit any station again that
Speaker 1: requires the exit. Jury deliberations are set to begin. Asap Rocky,
Speaker 1: his real name is rakeem Myers accused of fire in
Speaker 1: a couple of shots at his former friend Terrell Efron
Speaker 1: asap Rally, everybody knows that. And their question between the
Speaker 1: two attorneys is was the gun real or was it
Speaker 1: a prop? Prosecutor said it was a real gun. The
Speaker 1: defense claims it was a prop gun that shot out
Speaker 1: blanks that sounded like a real gun. Asap Rally says
Speaker 1: his knuckles were grazed by one of the shots, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't seriously hurt. Rocky's attorney said that he picked
Speaker 1: up the prop for security on a music video shoot.
Speaker 1: And good news is remember that great concert that took
Speaker 1: place at the Kia Forum and the into a dome
Speaker 1: Stevie wonder they're playing with Sting late in that concert.
Speaker 1: They raised about one hundred million dollars through the fire
Speaker 1: Aid benefit concert concert.
Speaker 2: I should say, well, the first.
Speaker 1: Monies have been donated community based organizations. The selected organizations,
Speaker 1: according to fire Aid, have received one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: or more in the first grants to go out they're
Speaker 1: going to displace a support displaced residents, workers, small business owners,
Speaker 1: the first responders, and services like food assistants, childcare support,
Speaker 1: critical healthcare sources, housing support, all that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: They said.
Speaker 1: The first phase of funds will be sent out by
Speaker 1: the end of February.
Speaker 2: Phase two is going.
Speaker 1: To focus more on the long term relief, remediation, rebuilding,
Speaker 1: and environmental issues that come up. Fire eight has been established.
Speaker 1: A program of issuance of smaller grants also available to
Speaker 1: some smaller community based organizations.
Speaker 2: Those will go out as well.
Speaker 1: All right, we've told you about the Turpin case, right,
Speaker 1: the Turpin family where the kids were all basically living
Speaker 1: in Squalor. Mom and dad kept them there for so long.
Speaker 1: There's been another story in this case in Pontiac, Michigan.
Speaker 3: My name is Matt. I live in Thailand. I'm from LA.
Speaker 3: How about little shout out or a wink or something.
Speaker 3: I love KFI keep up the good work, pillows and gals.
Speaker 2: Yeah and gals, Thank you. John.
Speaker 1: A couple stories that we are following today. Russia and
Speaker 1: the United States have agreed to start working toward ending
Speaker 1: the war in Ukraine but also improving diplomatic and economic ties.
Speaker 1: This came after talks between the top diplomats from Russia
Speaker 1: and the United States, Sergei Lavrov for Russia Marco Rubio
Speaker 1: for the US. They said they want to create a
Speaker 1: high level team to support Ukraine peace talks to explore
Speaker 1: closer relations and economic cooperation. Rubio stress that the talks
Speaker 1: mark the beginning of the conversation. President Trump is signing
Speaker 1: some new executive orders, while his first joint television interview
Speaker 1: with Elon Musk will air tonight in prime time. Trump
Speaker 1: is down at mar A Lago in Florida, setting for
Speaker 1: an awards program tonight, apparently by a program, an awards program,
Speaker 1: I should say by a group led by Mike Flynn,
Speaker 1: who was at one time National Security Advisor. The White
Speaker 1: House hasn't commented on these new executive orders that he's
Speaker 1: going to sign, but he's used previous executive orders for
Speaker 1: about seven thousand different topics. Delta Airlines jet came down fast,
Speaker 1: It landed hard, it lost its right wing, burst into
Speaker 1: flames in a runway in Toronto, and then flipped over,
Speaker 1: flipped over, and amazingly in the news conference this morning,
Speaker 1: they said all eighty people on board that flight from
Speaker 1: Minneapolis to Toronto survived the crash. The airport's CEO said,
Speaker 1: all but twenty. I'm sorry. All but two of the
Speaker 1: twenty one people injured on the flight have been released
Speaker 1: from the hospital. The case of the Turpins out in
Speaker 1: the ie was hard to look at group of kids,
Speaker 1: a lot of kids raised by a family with severe
Speaker 1: mental illness, in that the kids were never allowed to
Speaker 1: go outside rarely, that they were not fed properly, they
Speaker 1: were not instructed on how to live life properly. And
Speaker 1: every time we see a story like this, we think
Speaker 1: to ourselves, how many of these kind of situations exist today,
Speaker 1: like right now? And unfortunately we found another one in
Speaker 1: this case. A woman in Pontiac, Michigan, arrested Friday. She
Speaker 1: abandoned her young children in their home for several years,
Speaker 1: according to police. The Oakland County Sheriff's Office said, thirty
Speaker 1: four year old woman her identity is not released to
Speaker 1: protect the identity of her kids, left her kids in
Speaker 1: that home to live in absolute squalor. They were surviving
Speaker 1: on weekly drop offs of prepared food.
Speaker 2: You had three kids.
Speaker 1: You had a fifteen year old boy and thirteen and
Speaker 1: twelve year old girls. They all were taken to the hospital,
Speaker 1: placed in the custody of a relative by CPS, and
Speaker 1: the sheriff, Michael Bouchard, said in a press release that
Speaker 1: the conditions in which the kids were forced to survive
Speaker 1: were unconscionable and as we've seen in cases like this,
Speaker 1: when law enforcement officer takes to the podium to describe
Speaker 1: what goes on, they say something like this. Throughout my
Speaker 1: extensive career in this field, I have never encountered a
Speaker 1: scenario as dire and prolonged as this one, involving abandonment, neglect,
Speaker 1: and abuse of the highest order. And he said the
Speaker 1: situation would be deemed deplorable and intolerable for animals, let
Speaker 1: alone children. They've been deprived of any interaction with their mother,
Speaker 1: they have not received an education, and the far reaching
Speaker 1: consequences of this abuse.
Speaker 2: Must be acknowledged.
Speaker 1: And as we've seen in the case of the Turpen kids,
Speaker 1: this could potentially be a lifelong problem.
Speaker 2: I don't know how it's not.
Speaker 1: The sheriff said that the kids were found in soiled clothing,
Speaker 1: their hair was matted, their toenails were several inches long,
Speaker 1: which made it very hard for them to walk. The
Speaker 1: children did not know how to use personal hygiene items
Speaker 1: and did not know how to flush a toilet. They
Speaker 1: were called by the landlord. The Sheriff's department was called
Speaker 1: by the landlord of the home to perform a welfare
Speaker 1: check because he said he hadn't heard from the mom
Speaker 1: since December, ren hadn't been paid since October, and he
Speaker 1: was concerned about the well being. They searched the home,
Speaker 1: they found the three kids. The girls had locked their
Speaker 1: themselves in the bathroom but opened the door when they
Speaker 1: were asked, and the pictures of the inside of this
Speaker 1: home are unbelievable. Piles of debris. Police said the scene
Speaker 1: was indeplorable shape. Garbage piled as high as four feet
Speaker 1: in some rooms. Mold, human waste found throughout the house.
Speaker 1: I mentioned, I mentioned they didn't know how to use
Speaker 1: the toilet. They didn't know how to flush it. I
Speaker 1: should say so the toilet was overflowing. Feces was found
Speaker 1: in the bathtub. The fifteen year old brother said he
Speaker 1: and his sisters have been living alone in the home
Speaker 1: since probably twenty twenty or twenty twenty one. They survived
Speaker 1: on the prepared food that their mother or a stranger
Speaker 1: would leave on the front porch each week, so there
Speaker 1: was someone besides the mom who knew the condition of
Speaker 1: these kids. Mom never left any personal hygiene items, never
Speaker 1: left any toilet paper. While she maintained contact with the boy,
Speaker 1: it appears that she had not seen the girls in years.
Speaker 1: To give you an idea of how disgusting it was,
Speaker 1: the crews that went in and cleaned up all had
Speaker 1: to wear hazmat suits. Neighbors told deputies they didn't even
Speaker 1: know that there were kids inside.
Speaker 2: This is exactly like the Turpins.
Speaker 1: The neighbors said they never saw the kids outside, and
Speaker 1: they said they saw the mother drop things off at
Speaker 1: home each month, but didn't know why. Emma Gross lives
Speaker 1: a couple streets away. She said she scrambled to learn more.
Speaker 1: When she learned about the kids found unattended, she said,
Speaker 1: I'm told that the facilities the toilet wasn't working in
Speaker 1: the home. They had to use an alternative solution in
Speaker 1: a home where you're living at using the tub. That's
Speaker 1: pretty heartbreaking and the kids had to live under those conditions.
Speaker 1: An HOA board member, Nosey said she received text messages
Speaker 1: from neighbors when the news broke. Some of the people
Speaker 1: tend to keep to themselves in that neighborhood, They said,
Speaker 1: only to interact with neighbors through post on the association's
Speaker 1: Facebook page. Children have not attended school in the time
Speaker 1: since twenty twenty or twenty twenty one. They passed time
Speaker 1: watching television or playing games. It appears the girls had
Speaker 1: not physically left the home in several years. The boy
Speaker 1: slept on a mattress on the floor. The girls the
Speaker 1: girls slept on pizza boxes. I'm going to repeat that
Speaker 1: the boy slept on a mattress on the floor, the
Speaker 1: girls slept on pizza boxes. Mom was found at a
Speaker 1: different location obviously has been arrested. She said Dad doesn't
Speaker 1: have a doesn't have any connection to the kids. The
Speaker 1: sheriff has given a few more details today about all
Speaker 1: of this. Said dad had been in jail at the
Speaker 1: time that their mom abandoned them. After he got out,
Speaker 1: he got approval from a court to visit the kids,
Speaker 1: but mom never allowed access. The sheriff also blamed some
Speaker 1: gaps in the school enrollment enrollment process that allowed the
Speaker 1: kids to slip through the cracks, adding that the pandemic
Speaker 1: probably played a role. Since they were probably living alone
Speaker 1: since this bring or summer of twenty twenty, when nobody
Speaker 1: was in school. The department, they said, was overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: the support from the community and said they didn't need
Speaker 1: any more donations. They want to find a law firm,
Speaker 1: set up a trust fund for the kids to pay
Speaker 1: for their health and education bills.
Speaker 2: Which will be humongous.
Speaker 1: And they said food deliveries to the home were made
Speaker 1: by companies like Instacart and door Dash, and that nobody
Speaker 1: actually ever went inside. But still no reason as to
Speaker 1: why she abandoned the kids in the first place. It's
Speaker 1: and again we'll ask this one's been discovered, but how
Speaker 1: many more exist out there?
Speaker 2: Right now, it's time for True Crime Tuesday.
Speaker 4: The story is true, sounds true?
Speaker 2: No, it sounds made up. I don't know. Garry and
Speaker 2: Shannon present True Crime, all right. I've had my car stolen.
Speaker 2: I know a lot of people have had their car.
Speaker 1: In fact, I've had two cars stolen in the course
Speaker 1: of my career. I suppose there is a whole new
Speaker 1: world of car thievery that is going on, and it
Speaker 1: is concentrated along the West Coast and more specifically right
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC. Think think of the violent carjackings that
Speaker 1: we've heard of in DC in just the last couple
Speaker 1: of years.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: For example, the attempted robbery of a vehicle used to
Speaker 1: transport oh, I don't know, the President's granddaughter, Joe Biden's
Speaker 1: granddaughter Naomi. Secret Service agents had to shoot a guy.
Speaker 1: Another Washington shootout involved US marshalls who are working security
Speaker 1: for Justice Sonya Sotomayor. There was an FBI agent who
Speaker 1: was carjacked by a seventeen year old Congressman Henry Quaar
Speaker 1: of Texas had a gun stuck in his face and
Speaker 1: his car was stolen. A guy who was arrested after
Speaker 1: crashing in a stolen vehicle e aded police custody at
Speaker 1: the hospital, then stole an ambulance to escape. He was
Speaker 1: seen in surveillance footage driving away while wearing an hospital
Speaker 1: gown with the IV needle still in his arm. The
Speaker 1: thriving used car market of West Africa, it's what's driving
Speaker 1: the stolen car market on the East coast of the
Speaker 1: United States. There have been I think it's about what
Speaker 1: is it a million, roughly a million cars. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, car theft had been falling steadily since nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, and then we saw at least most of
Speaker 1: that I should say most of it, not at least
Speaker 1: most of that was because of simple security systems that
Speaker 1: became very very popular in cars and then became installed.
Speaker 1: They came installed on cars that you would buy. But
Speaker 1: early twenty twenty auto thefts have increased by about thirty percent.
Speaker 1: And the statistics for last year are incomplete, but right
Speaker 1: now they already suggest that we could see a record
Speaker 1: number of car thefts and violent car thefts like carjackings
Speaker 1: in the year twenty twenty four. About ten percent of
Speaker 1: those cars that are stolen in the United States today
Speaker 1: are smuggled overseas. And what's amazing is those used car
Speaker 1: brokers in West Africa. They are very specific about what
Speaker 1: kind of cars they want. You saw this in Gone
Speaker 1: in sixty seconds. There's a market out there for high
Speaker 1: end cars, and all it takes is a buyer to
Speaker 1: say something like I want a twenty twenty four Mercedes
Speaker 1: SL three fifty with leather interior, and you go get
Speaker 1: your henchmen to go out and find that car. The
Speaker 1: majority of times, the most common way to steal a
Speaker 1: vehicle is the most basic find one with the engine
Speaker 1: still running and the keys inside. That is a crime
Speaker 1: of opportunity, and according to law enforcement, that's about forty
Speaker 1: percent of car thefts are again just the most basic.
Speaker 1: You left your car running and your left your keys inside.
Speaker 1: Think about times of extreme heat or cold, when it's
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifteen in the valley you leave your
Speaker 1: car on to keep the air conditioning running. Or extreme
Speaker 1: cold that's probably even more likely where you don't want
Speaker 1: the car to freeze up. So at fifteen below, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at you, Minnesota. You leave the car running, you
Speaker 1: leave the ignition fob and the center console, maybe not
Speaker 1: the key with the ignition anymore. You are trying to
Speaker 1: carry a bag of groceries into the house and they
Speaker 1: slip in while you're in the house and take your
Speaker 1: car and they're gone. If you figure that each I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say punk kid, because I'm gonna make a generalization,
Speaker 1: gets about five hundred to one thousand, maybe fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a car, especially for the higher end ones. Then
Speaker 1: the next guy is going to get about two thousand
Speaker 1: and four it, and the next guy's going to get
Speaker 1: twenty five or three thousand for it and the price
Speaker 1: goes up, so that, for example, in West Africa, the
Speaker 1: most sought after vehicle is probably a Range drover or
Speaker 1: a Toyota pickup or a BMW Sedan. And if you
Speaker 1: get a BMW seven series to your pickup point, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get fifteen hundred bucks for it. But as it
Speaker 1: goes along the supply chain, you've got the fence, you've
Speaker 1: got the shipping company, you've got the customs broker.
Speaker 2: Everybody has to get paid.
Speaker 1: And even after expenses, there's plenty of profit because you
Speaker 1: could sell that same BMW seven series for about fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in the capital of Ghana. And like I said, Washington,
Speaker 1: DC was sort of the ground zero for a lot
Speaker 1: of this. In one specific place, there was a parking
Speaker 1: garage on Florida Avenue in Washington, DC that was an
Speaker 1: ideal place to stash the Mercedes or the BMW or
Speaker 1: the Dodge Challenger. The stolen car business was so robust
Speaker 1: in Washington in twenty twenty three that that parking garage
Speaker 1: became a de facto showroom for these stolen cars. The
Speaker 1: buyers and the sellers would meet there every night. They
Speaker 1: would inspect the cars, the deal was sealed. Cars not
Speaker 1: sold within hours were listed on Instagram. They were shown
Speaker 1: by appointment, and it was dependable. It was a business.
Speaker 1: It was a marketplace that opened up text messages that
Speaker 1: were intercepted by law enforcement captured the buyers that were
Speaker 1: placing orders for very specific cars, very specific makes and models.
Speaker 1: One eighteen year old delivering stolen vehicles had six carjackings
Speaker 1: in a week. There was a twelve year old who
Speaker 1: made headlines throughout all of twenty twenty two and into
Speaker 1: last year after he stole a BMW, a Jaguar, an Audi,
Speaker 1: a Tesla, a cargo van, and at one point he
Speaker 1: hit a half a dozen dealerships in Maryland in less
Speaker 1: than a month. He had been arrested twenty two times
Speaker 1: by the middle of last year, but because the Maryland
Speaker 1: judicial reform stipulated that kids under the age of thirteen
Speaker 1: couldn't be charged with property crimes, turned back to the
Speaker 1: property to the custody of his parents. Kids like that
Speaker 1: being manipulated by older gang members come in as pseudo
Speaker 1: father figures and the kids, a lot of them. Teenagers
Speaker 1: brag about their recent heightsts. They text each other. Gtarl
Speaker 1: Grand theft auto real life. You can train on social media.
Speaker 1: You could see the Kiya challenge on how to pick
Speaker 1: up a key or a Hyundai using a screwdriver in
Speaker 1: a USB cable. But the GPS tracker that you have
Speaker 1: in your car, that's not gonna help. They know where
Speaker 1: those are, they'll just pull them out. And most of them,
Speaker 1: like I said, some of the high end cars end
Speaker 1: up in West Africa for the burgeoning stolen used car
Speaker 1: market there for those high end the Mercedes, the Range
Speaker 1: Rovers and things like that. About some of those weird
Speaker 1: and unbelievable store in the world of crime. And this
Speaker 1: is a kind of a combination of crime and artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: and this is a this is something that should be
Speaker 1: a crime. Drew Crecente a couple of months ago got
Speaker 1: a Google alert that flagged what appeared to be a
Speaker 1: new profile of his daughter online, the daughter that had
Speaker 1: been murdered eighteen years earlier. It had Jennifer's full name,
Speaker 1: It had an old high school yearbook photo of her.
Speaker 1: It had a biography of Jennifer. It said she was
Speaker 1: a video game journalist. It said she was an expert
Speaker 1: in technology, pop culture, and journalism. The website where this
Speaker 1: new profile popped up was character dot Ai, and Jennifer's
Speaker 1: image and likeness were used to create a chatbot that
Speaker 1: people could talk to.
Speaker 2: Now. The company.
Speaker 1: Is a website that allows you to converse with digital
Speaker 1: personalities using the generative artificial intelligence. Think you're having a
Speaker 1: conversation with a computer like chat GPT or grock on Twitter,
Speaker 1: but it's interacting with you as if it's a person.
Speaker 1: These chatbots engage in conversation. They can be programmed to
Speaker 1: adopt specific personalities, biographical details of specific characters, whether they're
Speaker 1: real characters or imagine you know, you can program it
Speaker 1: to be Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 2: Or Darth Vader.
Speaker 1: And these companies that put up these chatbots have found
Speaker 1: a growing audience online because people want friends or mentors,
Speaker 1: or they want romantic partners. But this controversial technology also
Speaker 1: comes with incredible drawbacks. A guy in Belgium died by
Speaker 1: suicide a couple of years ago. He was encouraged to
Speaker 1: do so in a conversation with a chatbot. We saw
Speaker 1: that also with a kid, a twelve year old kid
Speaker 1: who was having conversations with these chatbots and eventually ended
Speaker 1: his life. So character Ai again needless to say, Dad,
Speaker 1: Drew Crecente, who's seeing his murdered daughter's face on this website.
Speaker 1: He said, my pulse was racing. I was just looking
Speaker 1: for a big flashing red stop button that I could
Speaker 1: slap and just make it stop. It takes it quite
Speaker 1: a bit for me to be shocked, he said, because
Speaker 1: I really have been through quite a lot, but this
Speaker 1: was a new low.
Speaker 2: And give you an idea what he's been through.
Speaker 1: His daughter, Jennifer, was killed by her ex boyfriend during
Speaker 1: her senior year in high school. Character AI says that
Speaker 1: the company will remove any chatbot that violates as terms
Speaker 1: of service. They're constantly evolving and they're refining their safety
Speaker 1: practices to prioritize community safety. When they were notified about
Speaker 1: Jennifer's Character, they said they reviewed the content and the
Speaker 1: account and took action based on their policies because the
Speaker 1: terms of service prevent anybody from impersonating any person or entity. Now,
Speaker 1: because of the nonprofit that Drew Corescente put up after
Speaker 1: his daughter was murdered, they spend time preventing teen dating violence.
Speaker 1: He was appalled that Character had allowed somebody to create
Speaker 1: this facsimile of a murdered high schooler without her family's permission,
Speaker 1: and because of his work. Like I said in that nonprofit,
Speaker 1: he keeps the Google alert that tracks mentions of his
Speaker 1: daughters on name online. Every once in a while it
Speaker 1: shows up on a spam website, maybe a news report
Speaker 1: that repeats old information. But that October alert led him
Speaker 1: to his daughter's name and picture on character dot ai,
Speaker 1: and he couldn't figure out it first. He said, the
Speaker 1: more he looked into it, the more uneasy he felt.
Speaker 1: In addition to using her name and her picture, the
Speaker 1: chatbot's page described her in very lively language, as if
Speaker 1: she were alive, like the tech journalist who geeks out
Speaker 1: on video games, always up to date on the latest
Speaker 1: entertainment news. He said the description didn't appear to be
Speaker 1: based on her personality or any specific interests about what
Speaker 1: her real life was, and he said the factual inaccuracies
Speaker 1: were beside the point. The idea of character hosting and
Speaker 1: then potentially making money from a chatbot using his murdered
Speaker 1: daughter's name was distressing enough he did not start at
Speaker 1: a conversation with it. He did not investigate the user
Speaker 1: that created the bot, but he immediately emailed the character
Speaker 1: company to have it removed. Asked about other chatbots on
Speaker 1: their site that impersonate public figures, a spokesperson said the
Speaker 1: reports of impersonation are investigated immediately by the trust and
Speaker 1: safety team. The character is removed if it's found to
Speaker 1: have violated. There is a privacy researcher at Mozilla Foundation.
Speaker 1: They said that this approach to moderation is way too
Speaker 1: passive because it plainly violates its own term of service.
Speaker 1: In the case of Jennifer Crescente, he says, if they're
Speaker 1: going to say we don't allow this on the platform,
Speaker 1: then they allow it on their platform until it's brought
Speaker 1: to their attention. That's not right. All the while they're
Speaker 1: making millions of dollars potentially. I mean, it was disturbing
Speaker 1: enough to push this guy to ponder up taking a
Speaker 1: new cause, and now he's considering legal options and advocating
Speaker 1: for more active safety measures to prevent AI companies from
Speaker 1: harming or re traumatizing anybody else that may have been
Speaker 1: the victim.
Speaker 2: Of a crime, in this case, the murder of his
Speaker 2: own daughter. So that's awful.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show, you
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