Aspiring novelists of the police genre can now learn directly from the unanimously considered as queen of crime, thanks to a new course online of the BBC Maestro platform starring a digital recreation of Agatha Christie (1890-1976).
Through artificial intelligence based technology, which has been combined with files of subtracted audio and records, BBC Master (the platform of streaming By subscription created by the British BBC chain) it has created a series of video lessons in which an avatar of the writer shares her best tips on narrative, argumentary turns and the art of printing suspense to the stories.
“We meticulously rebuild his words,” he explained to The Guardian Mark Aldridge, one of the experts in Christie’s work (together with Michelle Kazmer, Gray Robert Brown and Jamie Bernthal-Hooker) who has selected the letters and texts with which this digital version has been created. “Seeing how their ideas come alive has been a deeply moving experience.” The project has had the collaboration of BBC Studios, the chain’s commercial subsidiary, and with the total support of Christie’s heirs. James Prichard, great -grandson of the author and executive director of Agatha Christie Limited (the company that manages the author’s rights), highlights that the content offers “a master class on how to build a mystery, using Agatha’s own words.” The videos are already housed on the educational platform website.
-To give Christie life on the screen, actress Vivien Keene carefully studied the few available audiovisual records of the author. “It has been the most unique role of my 44 years of career,” he said. His interpretation was accompanied by specialists in visual effects that helped recreate the voice and physical appearance of the writer in a reliable way, in a similar way to the one that recent cinema has reincarnated to actors such as Peter Cushing or Carrie Fisher.
“I would lie if I said there is no concerns about the use of new technologies,” Prichard acknowledged in statements to the British newspaper Telegraph. His words add to those of many writers and creators who, in recent years, have expressed their concern for the use of AI in the creative field, from musicians who denounce the supplantation of voices and rhythms to illustrators who have already lost a good part of their work.
In this case, everything has been legal and according to the desire of the heirs: “I believe that this project has used the AI ethically. Vivien Keene’s performance is essential, and there is nothing generated by AI without a real and deep basis in the own words of Agatha,” Prichard said. But the debate is increasingly hot. The last friction between creativity, author and artificial intelligence was lived less than a month ago, with the complaints of the Japanese animation study Ghibli for the unauthorized use of its characteristic style to transform millions of images worldwide.
Agatha Christie, who died in 1976, left an impressive legacy: 66 novels of detectives, 14 collections of stories, more than 2,000 million specimens sold and the longest theater work in the world, The mousetrap. Its influence endures and, from what is seen, it will continue to last for many years, even in digital format.
