Today, True Crime is a particularly popular genre. Netflix has understood this and regularly enriches its catalog of thrilling documentaries on sordid cases. This Monday, February 17, 2025, the platform put online a new documentary series which very quickly won the lovers of True Crime. In a few hours, American Murder – Gabby Petito rose to the top of the ranking of the most watched series in France.
Gabby Petito, this name may tell you something. For good reason: his murder is relatively recent and his disappearance had toured social networks in 2021. It is therefore not surprising that Netflix wanted to return to his tragic history.
Ultra-coated murder
At 22, Gabby Petito took the road with his fiancé, Brian Laundrie. They bought and retailed a van to go on a road trip through the United States. The young woman wants to launch her blog and create content on social networks. But what seemed to be a happy and fulfilled couple hid a toxic, dysfunctional and deeply tumultuous relationship. At the end of August, Gabby no longer gave his loved ones when his boyfriend returned to Florida and refuses to communicate. After days of research, the young woman’s body is found and the homicide thesis is confirmed. Brian Laundrie will eventually shoot herself in the head a few weeks later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj6n5ak2qzi
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Divided into three parts of around forty minutes each, American Murder – Gabby Petito Captures the attention of spectators with many archive photos and videos, the testimonies of the Gabby family, a very close friend as well as her ex-friendly friend that she had contacted a few days before her murder. To strengthen immersion, Netflix does not hesitate to take out heavy artillery … and it is extremely destabilizing.
Like anyone from generation Z, Gabby Petito document his life. It is all the more true that the young woman wanted to become creator of content on social networks. It is a gold mine for Netflix which has a quantity of videos and very personal photos of her and her boyfriend, Brian. This makes this documentary series very special: since it is seen in all its seams, it feels like to know it “really”.
But that was not enough in Netflix. Indeed, the platform was based on artificial intelligence to strengthen our empathy with regard to the appalling destiny of Gabby Petito. Thanks to all the young women’s videos, Netflix was able to “give life” to the writings of Gabby Petito. In the first episode of American Murder – Gabby Petitowe can read “The writings and messages of Gabby Petito come to life with his own voice thanks to voice cloning technology”. Thus, we hear the voice of the young woman to read extracts from her diary or the exchanges she had with Brian or her relatives. Terribly disturbing … We imagine that Gabby’s family has agreed, but it makes the documentary even more disturbing.
This is not the first time that Netflix has called on AI for a True Crime documentary. Indeed, the platform was accused of using artificial intelligence last year to generate photos of Jennifer Pan in order to have more material to Jennifer’s truths.
