I'm Infuriated With How Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Episode 5 Fought Against AI's Dark Side

Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0

4

Deepfake photos and videos are a serious problem, and I applaud Law & Order: SVU Season 27 Episode 5 for taking it on.

I wish the case had been handled less clumsily.

The ending made little sense and only infuriated me further after the original perp disappeared with no explanation of what happened to her.

The AI Case Was Important, But There Were Some Holes In It

As soon as the photos of Penny with the teacher materialized, I thought they might be AI-generated.

AI deepfakes are a serious concern, plus we’ve got the low-tech version of this story on Days of Our Lives lately, so it seemed important for the cops to verify the photos before they arrested the teacher.

Unfortunately, they took them at face value.

It’s an understandable error, given that Benson and her team may not be as familiar with AI as they are with the protocol when they receive evidence that a teacher is having sex with a student.

Still, even before AI, they verified evidence, didn’t they?

There was no reason for them to wait to consult TARU until after the teacher had been arrested and insisted the photos weren’t real.

Since Fake Images Can Ruin People’s Lives, The Cops Needed To Do Their Due Diligence

It’s true enough that AI technology can be abused to create deepfakes that ruin lives and careers, but since the technology exists, one of the best safeguards is for law enforcement to learn how it works.

This is partially an issue of all-or-nothing thinking around AI.

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Many people are uncomfortable with the technology and think it should be banned altogether.

However, fear of all AI leads to situations where people aren’t familiar enough with it to consider whether videos, images, or text are real or AI-generated, which makes the problem worse.

What the Heck Happened To Haley?

The name of the AI company was very on-the-nose. Nudai instead of Nudity? Come on!

But the bigger problem was that the case the team built against Haley and Bryce for creating deepfakes of Penny with the teacher evaporated into thin air.

Haley was arrested and screamed that the deepfakes were a joke as she was loaded into a police car, and then she was never seen or mentioned again.

Instead, the entire focus shifted to holding the AI company responsible and arresting the CEO, which made it feel a bit like the case had suddenly morphed into something else.

SVU does this sometimes, and it’s always jarring when the original case disappears.

Additionally, SVU missed a fascinating opportunity by not pursuing the Haley storyline further. Haley’s scene implied she didn’t see the big deal about the cyberbullying she’d engaged in, but I wanted to understand the deeper reasons she did.

Bullying is a complex issue, and a girl who thinks it’s appropriate to create fake intimate pictures of a classmate with a teacher has deeper issues going on.

I was curious as to whether Haley had been sexually abused and how she learned to make these kinds of inappropriate pictures.

We got none of that, and the case we got instead was frustrating as hell.

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I Wish SVU Had Gone For A More Nuanced Approach.

As I mentioned earlier, the company had a name that made its purpose clear.

No real AI company that offered NFSW images would have such an obvious name. Doing so would just invite unwanted attention from law enforcement.

In addition, the defendant’s behavior was somewhat stereotypical. Sadly, as we see over and over in the daily news, there is no shortage of narcissists who think they can easily fool others, but SVU villains usually have more nuance than that.

It was irksome that the defendant kept telling lies that nobody could possibly believe, especially his attempt to defend himself against advertisements that made it clear the company was targeting people who wanted to generate erotic images.

The worst, though, was the judge.

The defense attorney argued at the beginning that the case was inappropriate and that the company could not be held liable under the law. If the judge agreed, why the hell didn’t he dismiss the case then?

At that point, he agreed with Carisi, yet when Carisi won the case, the judge suddenly said the law didn’t allow it and threw it out.

He could have done that at the beginning!

Why have the jury (and the audience) sit through a trial, only to decide the whole thing was invalid, especially when he’d been offered that out and didn’t take it earlier? Honestly, this felt like contrived drama.

A Few Other Thoughts

• Rollins being unhappy at Intelligence is news to me, though I won’t mind having her back full-time.
• I have to laugh at how this was advertised as Rollins’ comeback episode, but she didn’t appear until the last five minutes.
• There’s a lot of intrigue on SVU this season! Benson and Rollins don’t trust their new boss, the chief put Griffin in the squad room, and now Rollins is going to spy on Griffin.
• Griffin is giving me Cassidy Season 1 vibes. How long will he last before it’s all too much?

Your turn, SVU Fanatics.

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If you enjoyed this article, check out our coverage of other Dick Wolf shows like FBI and the One Chicago shows. You might also enjoy our coverage of Law & Order: Organized Crime.

Law & Order: SVU airs on NBC on Thursdays at 9/8c and streams on Peacock on Fridays.

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