Agatha Christie to be “resurrected” by AI

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has created a deepfake of the famous writer. Using artificial intelligence, they managed to recreate the appearance of the author of detective bestsellers.

Nearly fifty years after Christie’s death, her deepfake will teach a creative writing course. It is called Agatha Christie Writing and is already available on BBC Maestro for $10 a month. The course consists of 11 video lessons, each no longer than 20 minutes.

During the course, participants — the “students of Agatha Christie” — will have access to numerous materials and works by the author herself. The program is primarily built around studying Christie’s techniques in creating characters and writing dialogues, developing plots and unexpected twists, and mastering suspense — all of which will be explained by “the author herself.” To achieve this, the course developers analyzed all of Christie’s works and interviews. This was shared by the writer’s great-grandson James Prichard, chairman and CEO of Agatha Christie Limited: “The team of academics and researchers that BBC Maestro has assembled have extracted from a number of her writings an extraordinary array of her views and opinions on how to write”.

BBC Maestro’s CEO, Michael Levine, says: “As a lifelong fan of Agatha Christie, bringing this course to life has been a dream come true, and I am immensely proud of it”.

The role of Christie will be played by actress Vivienne Keen, whose face has been altered using the deepfake method. The writer’s appearance will be generated by AI based on existing photographs, and her voice will be recreated from preserved archival audio recordings.

Deepfake technology is becoming increasingly popular and in demand in the field of education. It helps students quickly engage in learning. Moreover, deepfake allows for the personalization of education and makes it more interactive, which boosts motivation and fosters the development of social skills.