“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.
