By: Olivia Ho

TikTok is a popular platform that allows users to post short videos. These videos can be about anything from dancing, to lifestyle, and so much more. Some users, however, have been abusing this freedom and have started posting inappropriate AI content that tells the story of missing or dead children.

These creators generate an image that reflects the likeness of the missing child, and then uses AI to create a voiceover. “If my mom turned right, I could have been alive today.

Unfortunately, she turned left,” says one of the AI childlike voices. This voiceover is citing the story of James Bulger, a deceased child, and what his mom said in an interview. James Bulger was tortured and later killed by two 10-year-olds, and if his mom had turned right instead of left while driving, she would have seen this happening.

James’s mother, Denise Fergus, commented that the posts were “disgusting” (The Washington Post).

A TikTok spokesperson described the content “disturbing,” saying there “is no place” for this type of content on TikTok. “Our Community Guidelines are clear that we do not allow synthetic media that contains the likeness of a young person,” the TikTok spokesperson, Barney Hooper, said in an email. “We continue to remove content of this nature as we find it.”(The Washington Post)

These videos have received millions of views and have also been spread to other platforms like YouTube.

“It is a widely held belief in many societies and cultures that the deceased should be treated with dignity and have certain rights,” said communication researcher Felix M. Simon, at the Oxford Internet Institute. “Such videos strike me as possible violations of this principle in two ways. Firstly, they appropriate the personality of the deceased, disregarding or defying their likely wishes. Secondly, they may infringe upon what the deceased’s relatives perceive as their dignity” (The Washington Post).

Even though TikTok is working to remove the videos, as AI becomes more and more powerful, it is up to us to remove the bad abusers of the software.