Creepy Lizzy

The newest Lizzy Bennet is a peculiar creature. True, her Regency-appropriate curls are lovely, and her dark eyes might pass for fine, but although her lips move when she speaks, their compressions and extensions don’t correlate with the words that issue from them. She blinks periodically, but the rest of her face seems creepily immobile, almost as if she were a computerized creation.

Which she is: This Lizzy--the product of a collaboration among a British arts university, an AI company, and the leading museum of Jane Austen’s life—is an AI avatar that will be available to chat with visitors in the Learning Centre at Jane Austen’s House in Hampshire, England, through mid-December.

According to a press release from the University for the Creative Arts, which has campuses in two southeastern English counties, Lizzy’s hair and clothing were created by UCA students drawing on historical materials. Meanwhile, the underlying technology was developed by the AI company StarPal, which gave Lizzy a “knowledge bank . . . curated from a selection of novels, manuscripts, and period-accurate information” suggested by Jane Austen’s House.

(Although, according to coverage by the tech-news platform Decrypt, that material included "scholarly studies on Pride and Prejudice, the works of Jane Austen as a whole, and studies on her life," none of which would actually be known to the Elizabeth Bennet found within the pages of Austen's novel. Some weird post-modern possibilities here. . .)

“The avatar has been developed to mirror the human qualities of Austen’s character as detailed in the novel, such as empathy and humor,” the university press release explains. Museum visitors will be able to converse with Lizzy, and as she learns from each unique interaction, her abilities will evolve.

Judging from the admittedly small sample available online, Lizzy has a lot of evolving to do; right now, she seems to be a long, long way from embodying the wit and charm—not to mention the plausibility--of her fictional prototype. When the release quotes StarPal executive Tanguy Dewavrin as saying, “It’s amazing how real she is,” I can only conclude that a life spent amid AI avatars may debase your sense of lived human reality.

But if this technology fascinates you, I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours: As a professional writer, my views on AI are about as unbiased as a buggy-whip manufacturer’s opinion of the automobile.

Even so, surely I won’t be the only one who finds it unnerving when Sophy Smith, a university faculty member who originated the project, talks about how the existence of Lizzy-like avatars “could transform learning--instead of only having text-based revision guides, students can now learn about literature by speaking directly to the characters.”

"Text-based revision guides?" Would those be what the rest of us call "books"?

As an instructional project for arts and technology students, Avatar Lizzy may have her uses. But as a route into literature, I don’t see the point. Generations of readers have imagined themselves in intimate dialogue with Jane Austen’s characters without the assistance of any technology more advanced than the codex. Who needs AI Lizzy when we have Jane Austen’s original?