Joaquin Oliverâs voice echoes through the hallways of Congress on the sixth anniversary of his death.
It comes from his motherâs cell phone outside the office doors of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The disembodied voice of the 17-year-old, who was a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, has a message to deliver.
âSix years ago, I was a senior at Parkland. Many students and teachers were murdered on Valentineâs Day that year by a person using an AR-15 assault rifle,â the voice says. âItâs been six years, and youâve done nothing. Not a thing to stop all the shootings that have continued to happen since.â
âThe thing is, I died that day in Parkland,â the voice continues. âMy body was destroyed by a weapon of war. Iâm back today because my parents used AI to recreate my voice to call you.â
The audio is one of six AI-generated voice messages from young people killed by gun violence, part of a new campaign launched last week by two groups, March For Our Lives and Change the Ref, to urge lawmakers to act on gun control.
âMy wife and I have been trying to use our voices for the last six years. Nonstop. We have tried almost every single way to approach gun violence in a way that people will pay attention. We havenât been very successful,â says Manuel Oliver, who founded the Change the Ref advocacy group in memory of his son after the 2018 shooting in Florida.
âSo we decided, you know what? Letâs bring the voices of our loved ones. Letâs bring the voice of Joaquin.â
One man listened to his sonâs voice over and over before signing off
The new campaignâs website, called The Shotline, invites people to listen to the voice messages, enter a zip code and send calls to members of U.S. Congress.
The campaign launched the same day a mass shooting at a Super Bowl victory parade in Kansas City killed one person and wounded more than 20 others, including children. There have been 50 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Uzi Garcia, 10, who died in May 2022, is one of the six children featured in the campaign.
âI love video games, telling jokes and making my friends laugh and jumping on the trampoline with my family,â Uziâs AI-generated voice says in his message. âIâm a fourth grader at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Or at least I was when a man with an AR-15 came into my school and killed 18 of my classmates, two teachers, and me. That was almost two years ago. Nothing has changed. Even more shootings have happened.â
Uziâs father, Brett Cross, told CNN he spent hours going through old playground videos on his phone to get the right audio of Uziâs voice. He says he worked with the campaignâs technology team to make sure the pitch was just right and he listened to Uziâs AI voice over and over before he signed off on its use.
âIt was bittersweet because we get to hear his voice again,â he says. âBut he should be here to speak for himself, and heâs not. So we have to get more and more creative to get these politicians to listen to us.â
Cross says he understands that employing the voices of dead children to plead for gun control bothers some people. He says critics on social media have described the campaign as unethical and âghoulishâ and have accused him of using his son as a âpawnâ to push a gun control agenda.
But he told CNN heâs unfazed by the criticism.
âIf you think itâs uncomfortable hearing my sonâs voice after heâs passed, imagine what itâs like to be us â to live with this every day,â he says.
AI-generated voices can raise legal and ethical concerns
Since the campaign launched, more than 54,000 voice calls have been sent so far to lawmakers, according to a tally on The Shotline site.
The campaign features four other victims of gun violence: Ethan Song, 15, of Connecticut, who died in an accidental shooting in 2018; Akilah Dasilva, 23, who was killed in a 2018 mass shooting in Tennessee; Mike Baughan, 30, of Maryland, who died by suicide in 2014; and Jaycee Webster, 20, who was shot and killed at his Maryland home in 2017.
More than two dozen other parents have contributed audio of their childrenâs voices to the campaign for potential use in future calls, Manuel Oliver says.
The campaign comes as rapid advances in AI technology have made it easier to recreate peopleâs likenesses and voices, allowing scammers and other bad actors to send fake and manipulative messages.
The Federal Communications Commission allows political prerecorded voice calls made to landlines, even without prior consent. But earlier this month, it announced that robocall scams using AI-generated voices are a violation of telecommunications law. The announcement came after an AI-generated robocall that sounded like President Biden circulated to New Hampshire voters ahead of the stateâs January primary election, telling them to stay home.
The Shotlineâs messages are sent to lawmakersâ landlines and make it clear that the voices are AI-generated, Oliver says.
One expert told CNN the parents are likely not breaking FCC law because theyâre transparent about their use of AI and their aim is not to defraud.
âIf you evaluate this call from that perspective, itâs clear up front itâs AI generated, so if they have permission from the families of the voice theyâre using, and theyâre not violating the TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) in some other way, it would be fine,â says Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, a robocall-blocking service. âThink about the old ads that said âcelebrity voice impersonatedâ â we were all good with those.â
But for some, using AI-generated voices of dead people in a gun control campaign may raise ethical concerns.
âIt does seem to kind of straddle the line between a good use of AI and something thatâs questionable,â says Robert Wahl, an associate professor of computer science at Concordia University Wisconsin and an expert on the ethics of AI technology.
Creating AI voices is a nuanced process that involves numerous adjustments to make sure the inflection, timing and pitch are as close as possible to the original voice and donât sound robotic, he says.
âItâs interesting because Hollywood has been doing this kind of thing for a while with recreating dead actors,â he told CNN. âAnd of course the technology is evolving almost on a daily basis. But I think itâs nice to be able to recreate a voice, as long as itâs OK with the immediate family.â
Manuel Oliver says he understands some peopleâs discomfort with the campaignâs AI-generated voices. He says some parents whoâve lost children to gun violence were reluctant to take part in the project.
But his goal is to jolt members of Congress and others into action on gun laws. And he says if it bothers some people â well, thatâs the point.
âIf bringing the voice of a victim alive using technology in a transparent way ⌠If that makes you feel uncomfortable, but youâre OK with kids getting shot at parades and schools, then somethingâs wrong with you,â he says.
âNo one should tell me what the hell uncomfortable is ⌠because I can tell you what feeling uncomfortable is. Itâs not being able to see my son ever again.â