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The independent journalist Jim Acosta sparked an intense backlash this week with what he called a "one of a kind interview": a video of him talking with an AI-generated avatar modeled on Joaquin Oliver, a teenager killed in the Parkland high school shooting in 2018.

The video, which the former CNN White House correspondent posted Monday to his Substack newsletter, began with Acosta making small talk about LeBron James and Star Wars with the late teenager's AI duplicate, which Oliver's father created to bring attention to gun violence.

Trained on an old photo and audio recordings of Oliver, the AI avatar used a chatbot to generate answers and delivered them in what sounded like his voice.

During Acosta's conversation with the computer program, he celebrated it as "so insightful" and a "beautiful thing," saying, "I really felt like I was speaking with Joaquin."

Mariana Rocha holds her son Jackson as she looks at a photo of her cousin Joaquin Oliver at a memorial on the fifth anniversary of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida. (Saul Martinez/Getty Images)

But the AI avatar offered awkward remarks ("Yoda's wisdom and quirky personality bring so much fun to the series") and repeatedly asked Acosta questions back, such as "Who inspires you to be a hero in your own life?"

The video was panned online as "extremely unsettling" and "ghoulish," with many people citing concerns that such technology could be used to create beliefs the person may not have supported and to tarnish the memory of the dead.

"This sort of interview style can't possibly represent what that child wants to say in any reasonable way," said Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in digital forensics. "There are plenty of opportunities to talk to real victims and have a serious conversation about this epidemic that's happening in our country without resorting to this sort of stunt."

Acosta wrote late Monday that the boy's "father approached me to do the story ... to keep the memory of his son alive."

Acosta also pointed followers to a video from Oliver's father, Manuel Oliver, defending Acosta, whom he called a friend.

"We feel Joaquin has a lot of things to say, and as long as we have an option that allows us to bring that to you and to everyone, we will use it," Manuel Oliver said. "If the problem you have is with the AI, then you have the wrong problem. The real problem is that my son was shot."

Manuel Oliver, the father of Parkland shooting victim Joaquin Oliver, speaks at a gun-control rally in Washington in 2022. With him are his wife, Patricia Oliver, and Parkland survivor and activist David Hogg. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

In a statement later to The Washington Post, Acosta said, "I think Joaquin's father makes a good point."

Oliver was one of 17 killed --- 14 students and three staff members --- in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In the years since, Oliver and his wife, Patricia, who co-founded the group Change the Ref, have used traditional protests and technological showpieces to advocate for gun control.

One project unveiled last year, the Shotline, allows people to send messages using AI-generated voices of six shooting victims, including Oliver, to members of Congress.

But social media users said this week's display was distasteful, particularly because Acosta had portrayed the AI chat as an "interview."

"You're talking to the simulacrum of a dead person," one user said on Bluesky. "You're facilitating a grotesque puppet show, using [a] grieving parent's heartbreak for a bit," wrote another.

The video adds to the growing list of AI resurrections done for political or legal advocacy. In May, the family of an Arizona man killed in a road-rage incident used AI to re-create him in a video addressing his killer in court. The judge said he "loved that AI," remarking that it felt "genuine," and sentenced the defendant to the maximum for criminal manslaughter, or roughly 10 years in prison.

Such uses have also found their way into entertainment. On Saturday, an attendee at a Rod Stewart concert posted an AI video broadcast on screen during the singer's "Forever Young" showing the recently departed Ozzy Osbourne smiling widely in heaven with other dead musicians, including Prince and Tupac Shakur.

"He's got a selfie stick," one person could be heard saying of the Osbourne image, in seeming disgust. The concert attendee captioned the video: "This is the craziest most disrespectful [thing] I ever saw in my LIFE!!!"

Will Oremus contributed to this report.