Congratulations, Jim Acosta, you have just pioneered a new genre of pure post-modern ghoulishness.
On Aug. 4, 2025, former CNN host and journalist Jim Acosta staged an interview with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) recreation of one of the victims of the Parkland High School shooting of Feb. 2018. The video referred to is accessible here. Aug. 4 is a significant date, as it would have been the 25th birthday of Joaquin Oliver, whose life was tragically taken in a senseless and horrific act of gun violence.
Acosta used the date as a political stunt and used the grief of Oliver’s parents, father Manuel and mother Patricia, in an act to garner viewership he has lost from his exit from the CNN network, reportedly over a dispute about losing a preferred time slot.
In the video, which is still viewable from Acosta’s YouTube channel, he begins by asking the AI a few questions about the nature of Joaquin’s premature death. The AI responds in a disturbing fashion, describing the horrific tragedy with all the emotional awareness a Wikipedia article can muster. “I appreciate your curiosity. I was taken from this world too soon due to gun violence while at school. It’s important to talk about these issues, so we can create a safer future for everyone.” The idea that on any level this AI is like Joaquin or capable of articulating anything close to humans is laughable and insulting. This statement reads with no emotion or humanity within it at all.
It only gets worse from here.
I should mention that while “Joaquin” is speaking, a hauntingly stiff video of him speaking, which is de-synced with the AI’s speech, is playing on the right of Acosta, adding even more to the baffling display of attempted techno necromancy already taking place. After a couple more questions about gun violence, Acosta then asks the AI a personal question, asking “Joaquin” what he liked to do in life. The AI voice abruptly shifts into something unrecognizable to the original voice and responds, “I’m all about love, laughter, and living life to the fullest.” The type of meaningless platitude that could be found on countless pieces of merchandise found at retailers like Target. Not the word of a 17-year-old young man.
The idea that this AI could share any resemblance in thought or worldview to Joaquin is a level of egregious foolhardiness the likes of which have never been seen before. The idea that Acosta may have interviewed any number of people about gun violence and school shootings, including any of the survivors of the Parkland shooting or other similar shootings including a sitting member of Congress, Maxwell Frost, prominent anti-gun violence activists, or loved ones of a victim, but instead, Acosta decided to violate any semblance of journalistic integrity, human decency, and common sense by choosing to take advantage of parents who clearly have not processed the tragic loss of their son in a healthy way.
This course of action simply must not be normalized in mainstream or other media. There is no benefit to treating AI, which is, in its current state, incapable of true sentience like a human. This is exactly what billionaires like Elon Musk and co are vying for; they want to control the narrative around issues and use AI as a tool capable of disrupting proper information channels to pump the brakes on narratives that expose them for the corrupt, soulless husks they truly are.
In conclusion, I hope that in the future we’ll be far more careful with who will be accepted as a journalist. To be clear, I’m not in any way critizcizing Acosta’s prior work with CNN however, I believe calling attention to this disturbing practice must be done now before it enters the permanent cultural zeitgeist” Calling Acosta’s work with the AI journalism is a lie and a betrayal of the splendid work of the great truth tellers of the past like John Hersey and Walter Cronkite.