Adapted by:
John Tones
WriterI've been writing about culture for twenty-something years and, at Xataka, I cover everything related to movies, video games, TV shows, comics, and pop culture.
Karen Alfaro
WriterCommunications professional with a decade of experience as a copywriter, proofreader, and editor. As a travel and science journalist, I've collaborated with several print and digital outlets around the world. I'm passionate about culture, music, food, history, and innovative technologies.
Despite its immense popularity, true crime is an increasingly controversial genre due to the creation of content based on real events using AI models. Some even fabricate crimes entirely.
Tremendous AI. Some titles of True Crime Case Files videos include “Husband’s Secret Gay Love Affair with Step Son Ends in Grisly Murder” and “Wife’s Secret Affair with Neighbor’s Teenage Daughter Ends in Grisly Murder.” This now-defunct channel recounted crimes that could pass for real, usually with static images generated by artificial intelligence. The creator intentionally hid the images’ artificial origin and generated the stories through ChatGPT.
It’s a whole subgenre. According to 404 Media, these stories soon caught the attention of journalists who were surprised they hadn’t heard of such striking cases, mainly because of the locations mentioned in the videos. YouTube canceled this and other channels for breaching the platform’s terms and conditions, including child safety policies that prohibit the sexualization of minors, after it became public that the content was AI-generated. However, this wasn’t mentioned anywhere. The content remains accessible in audio format through platforms such as Spotify.
The cartoon isn’t enough. The person responsible for True Crime Case Files was an AI programmer who had previously created short parodies of Hallmark-style romantic comedies on YouTube and filler content for social media platforms like Facebook. He told 404 Media that he exaggerated the details of the cases to make them seem fake. However, as with the AI-generated Facebook and Instagram videos, dozens of people still believe them.
Other true crime cases using AI models. The case of True Crime Case Files isn’t isolated, although it’s perhaps the only one that has tried to pass off its stories as real crimes. CEN Stories uses the same visual style in its images and headlines and includes a disclaimer warning of AI-generated content. However, the warning appears only in the description, buried among summaries and hashtags—not within the video itself. TikTok is also full of similar content, although those accounts typically specify their artificial origins. There are countless variants.
In Detective Challenge, the cases are false. In TrueCrimeAIMedia, they mix real and invented facts. Spanish-language channels introduce morbid trivia about historical cases, such as Nero’s castrated lover, and make popular movies and TV shows like Freddy Krueger seem real. There’s a whole catalog of channels—some closer to the moral limit than others—all using AI to generate three or four videos a week that attract thousands of views.
More garbage. While these cases may be legally protected, they share traits with what’s known as “slop”: low-quality, AI-generated content flooding social media platforms. The key issue isn’t whether the material is artificial, but how platforms favor this kind of content with their algorithms, prioritizing quantity over quality.
What good is true crime? This leads to the genre’s inherent contradictions. Since its beginnings in novels like In Cold Blood, true crime has blurred the line between reality and fiction. Crime and suspense films have long drawn inspiration from real cases, often manipulating them to serve dramatic purposes without crediting their roots. This tradition has always occupied a moral gray area.
True crime documentaries often face criticism for exploiting the trauma of victims and their families, turning suffering into spectacle. The use of AI models adds a new dimension. AI tools draw from both real and fictional cases, generating an amalgam that can appear indistinguishable from reality—potentially even more harmful. Sensationalism distorts facts, and AI intensifies that distortion.
The ethics of crime are blurred. The ethical standards that traditional media should uphold are muddied in these cases. These stories dwell in a space where reality and fiction are confused, with little regard for ethical limits. What’s worse—a fabricated story that mirrors real crimes or actual true crime content rushed and underfunded, designed to feed morbid curiosity without legal oversight? True crime continues to evolve—but not necessarily toward a more responsible direction.
Image | CEN Stories
Related | AI Videos Have Broken Instagram and TikTok’s Algorithms. Welcome to Social Media’s ‘AI Slop’ Era