Scottish mother is ‘disgusted’ by AI TikTok video of daughter talking about her death

The mother of a woman who was stabbed to death says she is “disgusted” by a TikTok account that uses AI to animate her daughter to tell the story of her murder.

Jacqueline Gallasher told STV News she was “horrified” after seeing footage of her daughter Charmaine O’Donnell being thrown to her death from a Helensburgh pier.

The TikTok account features images of dozens of women murdered in brutal crimes across the United States.

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Charmaine’s family is calling for stricter rules on social media, saying the stress of trying to get the video taken down is compounding their grief.

Jacqueline told STV News:

“I commented on the page and said, ‘This is my daughter, why are you using our image, and you’re saying a lot of crap.'”

“They are worrying families who have been through a lot of grief.

“We don’t need to be reminded of it. We know what happened to Charmaine. It just makes the whole page cringe.”

Jacqueline commented on the video and reported it to TikTok, where she was blocked by the creator and initially told by the social media platform that it did not violate its community guidelines.

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“I really thought it was a joke,” she said.

“They’re still there and now I’m blocked from that person’s page so I don’t know what else they’re posting.

“Honestly, I don’t think the people who make this stuff care. I think they just think, ‘Oh, it’s social media? Deal with it.’

“Just because it’s social media, why should families have to deal with it?”

Charmaine’s deepfake is one of dozens of AI-generated videos on this TikTok page, all impersonating victims who died as a result of a crime and telling their stories.

Many of these videos use the hashtag #truecrime, some racking up thousands of views, and the page itself has more than 11,000 followers.

Victim Support Scotland, a charity that supports victims of violent crime, said it had already helped another family remove a video of their loved one from its page.

Debbie Adams, the charity’s director of external affairs and development, said:

“This is an image of a real person, there’s a real family looking at it, real trauma that has been inflicted on that family’s life. All for social media, for entertainment, for clicks, and probably for monetization.

“The very fact that people are contacting us about this shows that the numbers are on the rise. This kind of material needs to be criminalized. Its creation should be criminalized as well as its sharing.”

In addition to stronger legislation, charities want social media companies to be held more accountable.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, some families are actually supporting the use of AI within the justice system as a way to give victims a voice.

Earlier this year, news broke in the United States that artificial intelligence was being used for the first time to make influential statements in court.

However, there are doubts among AI ethics experts.

Professor Shannon Valler from the University of Edinburgh said:

“And even family members who love us and care deeply about us can misunderstand us and not understand what we really want.

“So I think there’s a movement to have people clearly express while they’re alive how they want their persona to be used after they die.

“I think it’s going to be something like people compiling their wills and their wishes in some way to clarify what is allowed and what is effectively ethically compromising our own self-determination.”

The UK government said that under the Online Safety Act, platforms must remove illegal content, including content generated by AI, adding that Ofcom could impose stiff fines for content that does not comply with the law.

The TikTok account involved in Charmaine’s deepfake has now been deleted after being contacted by STV News.

TikTok’s community guidelines are understood to prohibit the use of AI-generated content on the platform that is deemed harmful.

The platform also requires users to label AI-generated or heavily edited content that features realistic-looking scenes or people to help users easily distinguish fact from fiction.

But for Jacqueline, the damage has already been done.

she said: “My daughter is not here to tell her story, so I don’t understand why someone would do something like that.

“It’s hard to lose someone, especially when it’s your child. You shouldn’t lose a child. I just miss her.”

A UK government spokesperson said: “AI must be a force for good, never a tool to exploit or harm families, especially those who have already suffered devastating loss.”

“Under the Online Safety Act, platforms must remove illegal content, including content generated by AI.Ofcom can impose stiff fines for content that does not comply with the law.”