Netflix’s new true crime documentary is accused of using photos of women that were generated or manipulated by artificial intelligence.
“What Jennifer Did” features several photos of Jennifer Pan, a Canadian woman who was involved in a murder-for-hire plot to kill her parents. Her images show Pan dancing in a red halter neck dress and flashing her peace sign.
But there’s something odd about two of the photos, as Futurist pointed out when she pointed out the women’s distinctive fingers, hands, and teeth—something that’s difficult for AI to accurately represent. This is a notorious human trait.
Executive producer Jeremy Grimaldi insisted in an interview with the Toronto Star that the photos were real.
“Any filmmaker will use different tools such as Photoshop in their films,” he told the Star. “Jennifer’s photos are real photos of her. Her foreground is just her. Her background has been anonymized to protect her sources.”
In one photo, Pan’s hands are deformed. Her right hand is missing her little finger, and appears to have strange brown lines crisscrossing it. The only discernible fingers on her left hand are the ones forming the peace sign.
In the second image, one of Pan’s two front teeth appears unusually long, and the other has receded into the gums. Her smile is noticeably different from the one in her third image and shows no signs of changing.
“Jennifer was bubbly, happy, confident and very genuine,” said a high school friend. This is a documentary with a photo slideshow.
The photo of a vivacious woman in a cocktail dress is a sharp contrast to Pan’s physical appearance and shy demeanor in the video of her first interview at a police station. There, she wears plain baggy clothes and glasses, and her long hair is tied back in a messy braid.
Grimaldi’s 2016 book about the incident, “A Daughter’s Fatal Deception: The Story of Jennifer Pan,” includes numerous photos, but the disputed image shows Pan wearing a red dress. There wasn’t a single figure in sight. Grimaldi did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
HuffPost reached out to Netflix and director Jenny Popplewell’s representatives, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
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