“CSI” creator Anthony Zuiker got a phone call about six months ago from his former CAA colleague David Freeman, who left his role as the agency’s digital media chief to found the startup Kynetic Media Ventures, who wanted to figure out a project about “real-time true crime.”
But while Zuiker wasn’t interested in another vertical video project alongside his GammaTime microdrama projects, he was intrigued by the prospect of telling true-crime stories in real time, without the monthslong gap between a breaking crime story and the documentaries that chart each beat.
Enter Cinemalistics, a new true-crime platform in development that lets users watch AI-generated cinematic and documentary vertical videos of crime sagas — with the projects updating as new evidence emerges. The app’s AI-generated trailer features an AI recreation of Zuiker (watch it below).
“The consumption of journalism needs to evolve,” Zuiker, who is the platform’s “chief crime officer,” said in a recent interview from his home in Santa Barbara. “We believe with the emergence of AI that this is the way to do it, where you just watch it versus read it.”
The app would allow users to watch an AI-generated adaptation of a crime story within hours of it breaking, with each “film” or “documentary” relying on items such as public records, news reports, press conferences and social media posts to produce a minutes-long video. The app will be powered by a proprietary engine using Nvidia’s AI tools, and it plans to feature both ad-supported and premium tiers for users.
The platform is created by Zuiker, Freeman, AI and technology entrepreneur Doug Scott, and actor Donovan Leitch, and it’s part of Nvidia’s Innovation Lab for AI startups. The company hopes to make its public debut at October’s Mipcom conference in Cannes. David Carstens’ venture capital firm 5IR Funds is leading the company’s first investment round and provided its first round of funds, though Zuiker declined to get into how much the project has raised so far. As more funding comes in, Zuiker hopes to hire journalists, production managers and story editors.
Freeman said in a statement, “I’ve had the privilege of working with Anthony throughout my career, and his superpower is his ability to bridge any platform with forward-thinking global storytelling. That’s why his digital book series ‘Level 26’ was so successful and it’s why ‘CSI’ became a global TV phenomenon. I started Kynetic to bridge the world’s biggest creators directly with audiences and fandom to deliver innovative and first-of-its-kind storytelling experiences. Now, Anthony is taking that same approach to journalism with Cinemalistics and reinventing how true crime fans will watch and engage with news on mobile devices.”
The project aims to combine the boom of vertical videos proliferating on social-media platforms with the true-crime obsession that’s remained a pillar of the entertainment industry, from the long-running Investigation Discovery series “On the Case with Paula Zahn” to the “Crime Junkie” podcast that regularly tops Apple and Spotify’s podcast charts. Audiences also have been fixated on high-profile cases such as Bryan Kohberger’s conviction last year for murdering four University of Idaho students and Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance in February.
Zuiker, who will oversee the production of the AI-generated videos, said the story would be uniform for every user, and as beats unfold — for example, if a new witness emerges or a weapon is discovered — both the film and documentary versions would evolve to reflect the new information. For users who want to dive deeper into each case, the app will provide a menu with access to primary sources behind each video, including 911 calls, media coverage, press conferences and more.
A challenge for Zuiker is making sure each video doesn’t depict the violent crimes themselves while respecting the victims and their families impacted by the act. It’s a line he’s had to toe while overseeing the “CSI” franchise, including the flagship show and its four spinoffs, making a focus for Cinemalistics producing “great storytelling in the crime space to satiate the crime enthusiast” while respecting survivors.
“We may merely just raise the knife and get out, and then find eloquent ways, as that information came out, to do it in a cinematic way that didn’t feel gratuitous and disrespectful to the surviving families,” he said, adding that the AI-generated videos would not portray faces of people until they come to light. “That’s a strict thing. We’re not a gore company, we’re just a storytelling company with science and forensics.”
The goal is to eventually allow Cinemalistics users to create their own AI-generated productions of crimes, though with guardrails to prevent the gratuitous depiction of violence. “It’s a journalism fix of the future, but it’s also a community ride of the century,” Zuiker said.
“You want to give freedom of expression to use the platform,” he added. “We also don’t want to stifle someone who could be far more creative than [me] to come in and go, ‘Well, you know what? That clue I found on the 14th button that says “Autopsy” that’s purple that I pressed in that third file says something like this about broken glass, I think this is what happened in the hit and run,’ and they may want to give their version.”
Watch the sizzle reel for Cinemalistics:
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