The End of Justice

The Trial:

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, allow me to share my screen."

The actor's lawyer faced a dozen concerned and sickened faces, each in their own little square.

"And for the millions live-streaming this at home, I ask that you pay close attention."

The artificial bookshelves behind the lawyer gave him an air of importance. In reality, he sat shoeless in the conference room. The dozen faces on the screen shrank, making way for the lawyer's presentation. The judge shrank too. As did the plaintiff and her attorney.

"The audio recording you all heard a few minutes ago," continued the lawyer, "I can see, has you all a bit shaken. Indeed, it would be quite incriminating for my client..." he enjoyed a dramatic pause, "If there were any indication that it was real."

The plaintiff looked dejected in her tiny square. The trails of mascara down her cheeks were fresh and bound for repaving. She and the prosecutor had just played strong evidence for the jury: an alleged recording of the night the defendant threw himself upon her and assaulted her.

"Objection, your honor!" shouted her attorney from his square.

"Overruled," commanded the judge from his, "Please continue, Mister Bren"

The Limousine:

As the legal team popped celebratory champagne, his client, the defendant, Mister Jeremy Chaplin, hid behind his sunglasses. He was the world's biggest star, and now star of the world's biggest trial. He sat with a cool, confident smirk on his face— one of the few things he knew how to do— while his world shattered to pieces behind the frames.

The car's windows were tinted, but he guessed that wouldn't stop the drone maintaining a steady speed alongside them from getting a clear picture. Cameras had progressed further than windows. There were filters to get around tints nowadays.

"What's the matter?" Mr. Bren chuckled, "The case is done with. You don't gotta stay quiet anymore. Cheer up!"

"You see," continued Mr. Bren in the virtual courtroom, "by running that same recorded audio, which the plaintiff claims is real, through an AI detection software, it came out to a 58% match for artificiality. Effectively, this means there is a 58% chance that my client is being libeled with false evidence."

"Objection, your honor!" shouted the prosecutor, "58% is not a significant enough figure to claim that my client's audio recording is fake!"

"Oh, I agree," replied Mr. Bren, "However, it sure as hell isn't enough to say it's real, either. In fact, the possibility that it's real is a statistical minority."

The plaintiff began to cry lightly again.

"Order," said the judge, "Mr. Bren, please continue your prepared remarks."

"My apologies, your honor," Mr. Bren said, "Now, I think we can all agree that the audio the plaintiff played for us just a moment ago was horrific..."

"Let's hear that audio one more time," Mr. Bren chuckled, three champagne glasses in, "I wanna hear it again."

An assistant held up his phone, and from it spewed the voice of Jeremy Chaplin.

"Just get on the bed..." it said. It was low and threatening, and accompanied by heavy, eerie breaths.

Then came the voice of the plaintiff, meek and distressed, practically whimpering "No..."

"Haha!" Mr. Bren laughed, listening along, "Its uncanny! Listen to that!"

Jeremy's voice came through the phone like the devil's: "Nobody's going take your side on this... You'd better just do it."

"No. Get away from me!"

Jeremy's breath got louder as it seemed to edge nearer to the phone.

"Stop! Get away!" she yelled.

Jeremy remained quiet in the limousine while Mr. Bren laughed and his team. The confident smirk had left his face. He wore a deep scowl now. The drone camera traveled steadily next to them, delivering his image to the world.

"...I agree that the audio was, in fact, horrific," Mr. Bren said, "However, it also reminded me of something. Ladies and gentlemen, have you ever heard of a movie titled, The Crawl? I am assuming at least half of you watching at home have. You see, my client won multiple awards for his role in this movie. Does anyone here remember my client's role in The Crawl? No? Well, allow me to remind everyone."

Mr. Bren began playing a clip from a zombie movie, in which a woman had fallen backwards, and was now scooting herself frantically away from a grotesque zombie (Jeremy), who paced after her in slow, menacing steps.

"I can see why you don't recognize him," Mr. Bren said, "the makeup is fantastic. Now, listen real closely here..."

Jeremy, as the zombie in the clip, uttered, "Just stay still," breathing heavily between each word, "Nobody will find you here."

The eyebrows on many of the jurors stood up at this moment.

"Now, let me play the audio from the plaintiff again," Mr. Bren said.

As it played, 'Jeremy' spoke to the scared woman in the recording, gasps fell from the jury. The tone of the voice was nearly identical to that of the zombie.

"Objection!" shouted the prosecutor.

"Overruled!" replied the judge, "And do not make me put you on mute! Go ahead, Mr. Bren. Finish your point."

"Well," Mr. Bren said calmly, "I do believe that the audio speaks for itself, but if anyone needs an explanation: AI cannot copy voices without a template, and if you listen closely, the similarities between these two pieces of audio make it very difficult to argue that the plaintiff's audio is anything but an AI copy from Jeremy's voice in the movie, The Crawl."

The prosecutor fumed in his square. The plaintiff had muted herself, but could be seen red-faced, wiping at her eyes with a tissue.

"Furthermore," Mr. Bren continued, "My client has starred in seventy movies this year alone. Do you know how he managed to pull that off?" again, he relished his dramatic pause, "Simple. It wasn't even him most of the time. It was AI. You all watching at home, you have seen my client be eaten by sharks in the movie, Killer Ocean. You've seen him do triple backflips in Olympiad. You've seen him coach a little league team to victory in The Mighty Ants. But in none of those cases, was it ever actually him."

"Actually," spoke Jeremy Chaplin, who had been utterly silent until now, "It really was me in The Mighty Ants, and that kid who plays Nelson really can hit an eighty-mile-per-hour fastball."

Mr. Bren suddenly broke into a chuckle, and half the jury did as well, as Jeremy's charming smirk made its appearance. The live stream zoomed in Jeremy, and hearts around the world were suddenly won. The judge quickly held up a hand. Everyone quieted, and he gestured to Mr. Bren to finish his remarks quickly.

"My point, ladies and gentlemen," Mr. Bren said, "is that this case is nothing other than an attempt to libel and defame my client, just as so many famous actors before him have been libeled and defamed, by abusing modern technology which the courts have yet to be able to combat. I say to the prosecutor today, and to the court as a whole, that the only evidence we can trust is that of an eye-witness; a first-person account, of which you have none, because the thing you are accusing my client of, simply did not happen. Thank you, Your Honor."

Mr. Bren's champagne breathe wafted in Jeremy's face as the limo ascended the Hollywood Hills. He was rambling drunken nonsense at this point.

"And if you get caught up in anymore hot water with anymore hot ladies, you got my number Jeremy. Dream team. That's us. That's you and me! Dream team! Hehe. Like you told those kids in The Mighty Ants. Remember? Dream team! The plan went so perfectly in there! I didn't think they'd call you up as a witness, but you were right! You were so right! I can't believe I doubted Jeremy frickin' Chaplin. Maybe you should be a lawyer! Hehe."

As Mr. Bren finished his remarks, a speech bubble appeared over the plaintiff's square. Her head was bowed over her keyboard as she typed a message to her attorney.

Reading it, his eyebrows shot up.

"Your honor!" he said, "I would like to call to the stand, Mr. Jeremy Chaplin."

"Very well," the judge said, "Mr. Chaplin. You will have the stand. Please select the box that says 'I do' on the following notification. It simply means that you are agreeing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God."

A moment later, a ping sound emerged from everyone's computers. Jeremy's square was now highlighted.

"Mr. Chaplin," began the prosecutor, "The plaintiff and I noticed, as I am sure the rest of the people watching this have, that you were quite stoic during this trial, uncharacteristically so. Now, you might say that this is because the courtroom is no place to be jovial, and there is some truth to that, but you have been far less than jovial today. In fact, you seemed rather distressed. Particularly, when the audio recording was played of you assaulting my client. Allow me to run back the video feed of your face during this time."

The prosecutor shared his own screen now, and an isolated video of Jeremy's face appeared. The audio ran. 'Jeremy' spoke through the phone.

"Just get on the bed..." his voice oozed again, "Nobody is going to take your side..."

The words, and the haunting breaths in between, were even more difficult to hear the second time.

In the video: Jeremy's face strained as he listened to his own voice. His eyes periodically shot across his screen from the judge to the plaintiff.

As Jeremy, in the stand, watched himself onscreen. He was unable to maintain his composure. He began to wince. His face began to lose color. Every nuance in his expression screamed he was guilty. Jurors began to notice. Some of their eyes went wide.

The plaintiff's brow was furrowed. She stared piercingly at Jeremy as he wore this uncontrollable grimace. Then a look of sudden hope and relief began to form on her face.

"This, Your Honor," began the prosecutor, "Is your first-person account. This is your proof! The man's defense can point to modern technology all he wants to cast doubt on this procession, but the man himself is still a man. He still feels. He still expresses. That fact cannot be faked by AI! And that, Your Honor," he said, pointing to Jeremy's dual expressions on the screen, "Is the face of a guilty man!"

At this point, the large square containing the video paused, and two white bars appeared on the screen over Jeremy's face to denote the pause.

A second after this, as the plaintiff began to smile at her lawyer, and the jurors' jaws fell open, and the judge began to pivot, two white bars appeared also on the highlighted square containing Jeremy.

There was a moment of confusion.

"Your Honor," Mr. Bren said, "If you would allow me to remove my artificial background."

With a mouse click, the bookshelves which made up the lawyer's background disappeared, and it was now made clear to all that he sat inside a conference room.

"Jeremy, poke your head in." Mr. Bren said.

From the left side of Mr. Bren's square, Jeremy did in fact poke his head in. They were both sat side-by-side, in the same conference room. Jeremy gave a cheeky wave and flashed his signature smirk.

The prosecutor was silent. As was the judge.

"Your Honor," Mr. Bren continued, "I am sorry to have played a trick on you, but the prosecutor has just made an untrue claim, and I worried that it may be taken instead for a fact. His claim was that the nuances of human emotion could not be faked by AI. That a guilty reaction was proof enough of guilt. Well, I believe I have just proven otherwise. The Jeremy that you have all seen today was in fact a real-time, AI, video generation software. It was trained to react as a human would, and I would say it was trained well, judging by everyone's reactions here. I played this trick to make the same point I made before. The only evidence we can trust anymore is an eye-witness. Something they do not have, because my client is innocent. I rest my case."

"Cheer up, Jeremy!" Mr. Bren said, shaking him by the shoulders, "We won! There isn't anything to worry about anymore, so stop lookin' all grim!"

"Nothing to worry about!" Jeremy snapped, "We just witnessed the end of justice. How can anyone be prosecuted for anything if reality itself can be called into question at any time?"

Mr. Bren chuckled.

Jeremy shoved him.

"What the hell is so funny?"

"Look out the damn window. That drone hasn't left us alone since we left the conference room."

"Why is that funny?"

"I just know that'll be a great clip: 'Jeremy Chaplin driving away from his sexual assault trial yelling, 'its the end of justice'!"