To whom do we belong, once we are dead?
I picked up Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie from a second-hand bookshelf in one of Dubai’s resorts last week. It had been a long time since I read a Christie novel and I had never read one of the works she completed post-Second World War. I was ignorant, in fact, that her career as a writer had run as late as the 1970s; cue the surprise when the opening scene takes place on an aeroplane!
An AI version of Christie has been reimagined by the BBC this year as a teacher for their Maestro series. The response of online feeds and news sites fell on the extreme ends of the sublime-to-ridiculous spectrum. The BBC, quite naturally, is at pains to allay any fears and fan angst, reassuring the masses that this AI rendering of the ‘Most Famous Novelist of All Time’ is faithful, sensitive to who she was, and created through the careful mining of her autobiography, her works, and the few extant pieces of recorded footage. It has the support of her family, with a grandson claiming that the likeness is really quite incredible.
No, I haven’t ponied up the cost of the course. It may be brilliant, may be a ‘novel’ reimagining of the comments she made in her autobiography on the challenges and secrets of mystery writing. Online, reviews are tepid, but the myriad of potential reasons for that discourage even a discussion of the Maestro’s newest-old lectureress.
Vivien Keene portrayed Christie. She acted the part, dressed up, behind the desk with a script. The AI aspect then was her re-rendering, her voice and appearance, and it is a far less intrusive change than I first imagined. Comparisons can be made with CGI, altering the appearance of actors like Andy Serkis to resemble the fictional characters they play, perhaps even with the portrayal of famous stars in the recent wash of biographical films released in recent years. Elvis. Mercury. In essence, it is well done, and I did not find it at all creepy, which I thought it might be. No, the off-putting aspect, given we are still in its nascence, is that AI has been used to such great effect.
There is little I assume to therefore stop the masses, let alone the larger corporations, from bringing other esteemed members of les défunts célèbres ‘to life’. As a former history teacher my mind instantly turns to Adolf Hitler, yet more subtle reimaginings pose powerful propositions, especially those who hold a celebrated and revolutionary status to this day.
Imagine the likeness of Leila Khaled being twisted, or Frantz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba, for the pumping of public opinion: the feeding of rage that the internet is so well suited to, especially when coupled with a famous and coveted face.
And yet, the question my mind turns to is whether Agatha Christie would herself have accepted her likeness, her voice, her works, being used in this manner. She has not consented to it, though perhaps a lawyer employed by her estate might argue that such decisions and rights have passed to her descendants and beneficiaries. Would I, as lacking in fame as many others, be comfortable with this? To whom does my likeness belong once I am dead, if anyone? When I am captured an untold number of times each day by CCTV, my fingerprints taken at airport check-in, my data sold by unscrupulous companies, my own social media (available only to friends but uploaded all the same) including videos and pictures, it seems inevitable that my likeness can be reimagined, that I can be rendered to someone else’s preference.
And this is not a far-flung future, but one that is very clearly happening now.
A workshop participant not long ago suggested that my competition for our in-house writing courses was not other Dubai-based companies, but the likes of the BBC’s Christie and Maestro. To some degree, she is course correct. The BBC operates at scale and can undercut most. Many prefer to learn from their homes, with some novelty attached. But there is a magic to being in a room with somebody, in deep discussion. Covid did not teach us that, but certainly brought it to the fore.
With regards to writing courses, books, memory... the question that interests me today is neither pedagogy nor technology, but possession. Already, artists must live with the knowledge that their work is pirated, shared online by the modern evangelists liberating gate-kept knowledge. It is incredibly difficult for those in the public sphere to be entirely possessing of their own creations.
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In life we are shaped, in death we are owned. Face-to-face, is simply the way to go.
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