Books, Movies, and Artificial Intelligence--Just a difference of Technology?

     

A dress and hat the Lost Lady might have worn.

    Those of you who have followed this blog know that I love the writing of Willa Cather, and that we often enjoy attending the Cather Conferences in Red Cloud, Nebraska.  This year, the book chosen to be explored was A Lost Lady, published by Alfred A. Knopf.  Knopf sold the film rights to A Lost Lady to Warner Brothers, and Cather was so dismayed by the film version that she resolved never to permit a screen adaptation of her work in the future.  

     As with many of her books, names of towns and people are changed, but the identities of people and locations are often identifiable, and that is particularly true in the case of A Lost Lady.  This past week, several speakers explored Cather's use of actual people in this particular book.  Were there reasons for the family to have been offended?  Was the identity obvious, despite changed names and other variations?

    This week's blog ponders the question of privacy.  Did Willa Cather invade the privacy of the people she used as inspiration for her characters, and did it matter that she waited until after their deaths to 'borrow' their lives?

    One speaker at the Conference observed that all writers of fiction rely on creating their characters from individuals they have met throughout their lives.  Most writers are good observers, catching expressions and mannerisms and countless other details with which they construct imaginary people for their stories.  When does that 'borrowing' go too far?

    In the case of A Lost Lady, Cather altered appearances, professions, and names, but she used descriptions of their home, their travel habits, and their uniqueness in that community which made it easier to associate those details with the couple.  Today, countless Cather scholars and fans like me have learned the identities of the real people Cather used in her books.

    Lately, I have blogged about AI and the ability to impose the features of real people to make it appear that they did or said things that they never did or said.  Was what Willa Cather did a century ago an early example of that, just done without the technology?    

    Will it matter if movies are made using the images of long-dead movie stars from the past as characters?  Should their descendants receive payment for using the images.  Should anyone have the right to object on behalf of the dead movie star if AI is used to impose nudity or vulgar language or to express opinions the person would never have held?  

    It seems ironic that Cather was so offended by the changes to her book in the film that followed that she refused to allow her other books to be made into movies, since she had altered the lives of real people to create characters in her novels. 

    The possible uses of AI have concerned me, as the questions raised in some of my earlier blogs have shown.  Was Cather's use of adapting real people's lives in her fiction  a forerunner without the technology to what is happening now?  Can it be stopped, and should it be?  Or is AI just a technical advancement of something we long ago accepted?