AI-Generated Victim Impact Statements Are Here, and They Are Just as Disastrous as You’d Expect

June 9 2025

Victim impact statements already lead to harsher sentences for criminal defendants. The use of AI will only make things worse.

“In another life, we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness and a God who forgives. I still do.”

If you wanted to design the perfect magnanimous and sympathetic victim of a crime, you could do a lot worse than building around a quote like this. However, this statement was not made by an actual person, but by an AI simulacrum of a manslaughter victim. In a first for a U.S. legal proceeding, an AI-generated victim impact statement from a deceased victim was recently introduced in court—at the sentencing hearing of the person who killed him.

Read more at Balls and Strikes