\n<\/p>\n
Agatha Christie is dead. But Agatha Christie also just started teaching a writing class.<\/p>\n
\u201cI must confess,\u201d she says, in a cut-glass English accent, \u201cthat this is all rather new to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The literary legend, who died in 1976, has been tapped to teach a course with BBC Maestro<\/a>, an online lecture series similar to MasterClass. Christie, alongside dozens of other experts, is there for any aspiring writer with 79 pounds (about $105) to spare.<\/p>\n She has been reanimated with the help of a team of academic researchers \u2014 who wrote a script using her writings and archival interviews \u2014 and a \u201cdigital prosthetic\u201d made with artificial intelligence and then fitted over a real actor\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not trying to pretend, in any way, that this is Agatha somehow brought to life,\u201d Michael Levine, the chief executive of BBC Maestro, said in a phone interview. \u201cThis is just a representation of Agatha to teach her own craft.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The course\u2019s release coincides with a heated debate about the ethics of artificial intelligence. In Britain, a potential change to copyright law<\/a> has frightened artists who fear it will allow their work to be used to train A.I. models without their consent. In this case, however, there is no copyright issue: Christie\u2019s family, who manage her estate, are fully on board.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just had the red line that it had to be her words,\u201d said James Prichard, her great-grandson and the chief executive of Agatha Christie Ltd. \u201cAnd the image and the voice had to be like her.\u201d<\/p>\n Christie is hardly the only person to have been resurrected with A.I.: Using the technology to talk to the dead<\/a> has become something of a cottage industry<\/a> for wealthy nostalgics<\/a>.<\/p>\n She\u2019s not the first dead artist to be turned into an avatar, either.<\/p>\n In 2021, A.I. was used to generate Anthony Bourdain\u2019s voice reading out his own words<\/a>. The actor Peter Cushing<\/a> has been resurrected to act in movies. Last year a Polish radio station used A.I. to \u201cinterview<\/a>\u201d a dead luminary, leading many to worry that it had put words in her mouth.<\/p>\n For Christie, A.I. was used only to create her likeness, not to build the course or write the script.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s part of why Mr. Levine rejects the idea that this is an Agatha Christie deepfake. \u201cThe implication of the word \u2018fake\u2019 suggests that there is something about this which is sort of passing off,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the case.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Prichard said his family would never have agreed to a project that invented Christie\u2019s views. And they are proud of the course.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not speaking for her,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are collecting what she said and putting it out in a digestible and shareable format.\u201d<\/p>\n A team of academics combined or paraphrased statements from Christie\u2019s archive to distill her advice about the writing process. They took care to preserve what they believed to be her intended meaning, with the aim of helping more of her fans interact with her work, and with fiction writing in general.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t make anything up in terms of things like her suggestions and what she did,\u201d said Mark Aldridge, who led the academic team.<\/p>\n That, for Carissa V\u00e9liz, a professor of philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in A.I. at Oxford University, is still \u201cextremely problematic.\u201d<\/p>\n Even if the author\u2019s family consented, Christie has not, and cannot, agree to the course. That is complex with any sort of historical re-enactment or animation, but Dr. V\u00e9liz noted that writers spend hours finding the right word, or the right rhythm.<\/p>\n \u201cAgatha Christie never said those words,\u201d Dr. V\u00e9liz said in a phone interview. \u201cShe\u2019s not sitting there. And therefore, yes it\u2019s a deepfake.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you see someone who looks like Agatha Christie and talks like Agatha Christie, I think it\u2019s easy for the boundaries to be blurred,\u201d she said, adding, \u201cWhat do we gain? Other than it being gimmicky?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But Felix M. Simon, a research fellow in A.I. and digital news at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, noted that this Christie was meant to entertain and also educate \u2014 which the author did when she was alive.<\/p>\n And the representation draws from something \u201cclose to her actual writings and her actual words \u2014 and therefore by her extension, to some degree, her thinking,\u201d Dr. Simon said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s also very little risk of this harming, posthumously, her dignity or her reputation,\u201d he argued. \u201cI think that makes these cases so complicated because you can\u2019t apply a hard and fast rule for every single one of them and say: \u2018This is generally good or generally bad.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps this sort of fact-fiction-futurism m\u00e9lange is just the way things are going in an age when A.I. can be used to finish sentences, replace jobs and, perhaps, even try to resurrect the dead.<\/p>\n Either way, the creators think Christie \u2014 a brave and creative adventurer \u2014 would have liked it. \u201cCan we definitively know that this something she would be approving of?\u201d said Mr. Levine, of BBC Maestro. \u201cWe hope. But we don\u2019t definitively know, because she\u2019s not here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n