Netflix’s new documentary, The Investigation of Lucy Letby, has been criticised for using AI to disguise the identity of some of those who chose to speak in the film.
The 90-minute feature examines the Lucy Letby case and shows unseen footage from Chester police of her arrest.
Letby was arrested in 2020, with the former neonatal nurse charged with seven counts of murder and 15 counts of attempted murder in relation to 17 babies between June 2015 and June 2016.
In August 2023, she was found guilty on seven counts of each, but not guilty on two counts of attempted murder. The jury could not reach a verdict on the other six counts, but one was retried the following year, and she was found guilty.
Letby, despite being given life in prison, has maintained her innocence, insisting that she is ‘not the sort of person who kills babies’.
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Since her case came to the spotlight, there has been intense online discourse surrounding the verdict and whether she is, indeed, guilty, making it one of the most divisive convictions in British history.
With much of the evidence still under scrutiny, several documentaries have been made by the likes of BBC, ITV, and Channel 5 to explore the views of professionals.
The latest comes from Netflix and features previously unseen footage and unheard insider accounts.
However, the streaming giant has come under fire for how it depicts some witnesses’ accounts.
What does The Investigation of Lucy Letby reveal?
Released on February 4, The Investigation of Lucy Letby includes interviews with Letby’s friends, her victims’ families, legal professionals, and doctors.
There’s also footage of her parents, Susan and John Letby, who have insisted they will not be tuning in, having slammed the doc as a ‘complete invasion of privacy’, claiming Netflix did not ‘have the decency to tell’ them they were using recordings from inside their home.
Such recordings include the moment Letby was arrested while sleeping at their house, breaking down in tears in police bodycam footage and saying she has ‘only ever done [her] best for those babies’.
Susan is heard screaming and crying, begging authorities, ‘Not again.’ Letby was arrested three times between 2018 and 2020 due to the complex evidence surrounding the case.
Before she is taken away, Letby requests to say goodbye to her cat, telling her parents: ‘You know I didn’t do it,’ to which her mum replied: ‘I know you didn’t. We know that.’
What follows in the interviews includes an admission from Dr. John Gibbs, who testified against Letby. He confesses now to having a ‘tiny’ doubt about her guilt, despite having noted the ‘unusual’ fact that Letby was the ‘common factor’ for being on shift at the time of all deaths.
He said he still carries a ‘tiny guilt’ that they got the ‘wrong person’.
Meanwhile, Dr. Shoo Lee was not directly involved with Letby but learned that some of his research was used to convict her. He expressed concerns that prosecutors ‘misrepresented’ his studies by inaccurately attributing the colour of a baby’s marks to air embolisms.
Furthermore, Mark McDonald discussed the evidence used against Letby, such as a Post-It note ‘confession’ in which she wrote that she ‘killed them on purpose’ and was a ‘horrible, evil person’. Lawyer McDonald argued that this was part of a therapy exercise given to Letby.
‘I was blaming myself, but not because I’d done something, because of the way people were making me feel,’ Letby herself has said, having been advised to write down her thoughts.
‘And I did just not want to be here anymore. I just felt like it was all just spiralling out of control. I just didn’t know how to feel about it or what was gonna happen or what to do.’
And while Letby fights for a retrial, one of her friends, who is given the pseudonym of Maisie in the doc, shares letters written to her from prison, in which Letby thanks her for her support, adding: ‘I’m trying to do all I can to remain strong and positive; I am determined to get through this. I will not give up.’
Why has AI been used in the documentary?
As the documentary opens, a message informs viewers that ‘some contributors have been digitally disguised to maintain anonymity. Their names, appearances, and voices have been altered.’
Artificial intelligence is then used several times when portraying interviews with victims’ parents and Letby’s university friend, ‘Maisie’.
Given the name of Sarah, one of the babies’ mothers speaks emotionally about the death of her baby, ‘Zoe’, whose name has also been changed. The infant died of pneumonia and sepsis.
Having opted not to appear on camera, her appearance was digitally anonymised using AI, rather than using something like a silhouette or a distorted voiceover, which documentaries are known for doing on sensitive matters.
Still, the woman on screen is convincing, as she looks human and reacts as a grieving mother might, sighing at the appropriate times and emotionally looking to the side.
Also digitally recreated was friend ‘Maisie’, who, again, presents in an emotional manner, placing her head in her hands and breaking down in tears after reading one of Letby’s notes.
What does ‘digitally anonymise’ mean?
While keen to share their stories and versions of events, not everyone who appears in a documentary wishes to be identifiable; hence, shadows or blurred figures are sometimes used, as well as voice actors.
Digital anonymisation was an unconventional stylistic choice from Netflix. It means, simply, to disguise a person’s identity digitally, but not only by hiding their faces, but by replacing them entirely with a digital figure.
What have the filmmakers said about the use of AI?
Filmmaker Reuben Hamlyn, who co-created Another Body, a film about the victim of deepfake pornography, used AI to disguise the victim’s identity.
In 2024, he told The Guardian that using AI is ‘such an important tool in empowering people to share their story’.
Ben Affleck also defended the use of AI in the movie industry, even if it can’t possibly replace ‘human beings making films’.
‘Movies will be one of the last things, if everything gets replaced, to be replaced by AI,’ he said in 2024.
The Gone Girl actor added: ‘What AI is going to do is going to disintermediate the laborious, less creative, and more costly aspects of filmmaking that will allow costs to be brought down, that will lower the barrier for entry, that will allow more voices to be heard, that will make it easier for the people that want to make Good Will Huntings to go out and make it.’
Oscar-winning film The Brutalist caught heat after editor Dávid Jancsó admitted using AI to make Hungarian dialogue spoken by Adrien Brody more authentic, while AI cloning was also used to enhance the singing of Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón.
However, others have been more critical, with Avatar director James Cameron saying: ‘The idea that this technology could potentially replace actors and the unique lens that every artist brings is horrifying.’
Do you agree with AI use in films and documentaries?
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How have viewers responded?
For the most part, viewers of the Lucy Letby documentary are not impressed.
Taking to X, @JessicaKnapik branded the decision ‘foul’, adding that they ‘sat in disbelief’ upon realising what they were watching.
@mikesleepyhead replied that ‘it is the actual victim with AI covering their face so they aren’t identified’, urging the poster to ‘stop being insensitive’, to which they argued back: ‘Yeah there’s a million creative ways to shoot that besides garbage cartoon looking slop’.
@charli_says also called the AI use ‘so distracting and weird’, while @erikaxtc also called it ‘disturbing’.
‘Might as well have just blurred their faces.’
Netflix has been contacted for comment.
The Investigation of Lucy Letby is now streaming on Netflix.
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