Did the BBC produce Agatha Christie Deepfake?

On Wednesday, the BBC Maestro (a service similar to the Master Class) launched a new writing course taught by the best-selling novelist of all time. There is a capture: the author, the mysterious writer of the definition, Agatha Christie, died 50 years ago and was therefore unable to participate.

Instead, BBC Maestro uses actresses and artificial intelligence to recreate Christie’s, drawing inspiration from the author’s own novels, interviews and letters from course material. Creators describe efforts as “world first” and now use the “Writing by Agatha Christie” masterclass.

After the course began, critics accused the BBC of producing Agatha Christie as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the BBC Maestro wants to emphasize the involvement of Christie Estate and their respect for the late author.

“This groundbreaking course was carefully created over two years of nearly 100 people, including scholars, researchers, creative professionals, and a team of the world’s leading Agatha Christie Scholars, each of whom studied Agatha’s written and spoken words and curated her courses to reflect all her teachings,” the announcement. ”

Is Agatha Christie’s writing course inspired or disturbing?

BBC masters say audiences and aspiring writers can learn “suspense, plot twists and memorable characters” from Christie’s himself, but no matter what, many creatives are paying great attention to applying artificial intelligence to art.

Whether the course qualifies as a deep effect depends on how you define DeepFake. The 2024 article by BBC NewsRound defines Deepfakes as “videos, pictures or audio clips made with artificial intelligence look real. They can be used for entertainment, even for scientific research, but sometimes they are used to imitate people like politicians or world leaders in order to deliberately misunderstand people.”

This term is often used together with negative meanings to refer to content generated by AI created without consent. Just this week in the United States, Congress passed a “knockdown” bill to prevent deep performances and revenge porn from spreading online.

Apparently, Christie couldn’t personally agree that her portraits and voices were used to sell writing courses, but Christie’s estate has been involved in the project since its inception. The BBC works closely with Christie’s great-grandson James Prichard, who manages the author’s property.

Of course, the BBC knew the project would be controversial, and both Prichard and BBC Maestro refused to use the term “deepfake” in this case.

Agatha Christie Ltd. shares her tremendous talents and processes with the world.”

Both Prichard and BBC Maestro are keen to emphasize that Christie’s similarity is loving, despite the controversial nature of the AI ​​Resurrection project.

In answering our questions, BBC Master CEO Michael Levine told us that the most common word “deep” is material made “unauthorized” and “usually for malicious purposes.”

“This is definitely not what we are doing,” Levine said in an emailed statement to Mashable. “Every step is guided by ethics, transparency and a deep respect for her legacy.”

Levin also highlights the involvement of Christie’s own property and the main scholars of her work.

“From the beginning, our focus was 100% moral and respectful in respect of Agatha Christie’s extraordinary legacy. We fought alongside Christie estate to ensure her image is only used with their explicit confirmation and in a way that reflects her values. We worked with four world-leading Agatha Christie, a material related to her writings and writings, performed in a performance manner. Only in the context of this program.”

The team was very careful for two years, representing Christie as much as possible, but AI skeptics immediately condemned the entire project.

Whether you think this is an exciting opportunity to learn “directly from the most successful novelist ever” or a weird application of AI technology, BBC Maestro absolutely rightly calls the course “groundbreaking.”