Attention Austen fans: Now you can have tea with Lizzy Bennet, IRL.
Lizzy Bennet, the hero of Pride and Prejudice, is that rare, perfectly-drawn character that one can imagine walking right off the page. But luckily, we no longer have to imagine.
She’s real, folks. And she’s ready to talk.
A UK-based hivemind have animated Ms. Bennet, granting our GOAT the form of a life-like, chatty avatar. The uncanny android is the result of a collaboration between the Jane Austen House museum in the author’s native Hampshire, the University for the Creative Arts, and an AI company called Starpal.
Located in the Learning Centre at Jane’s old house, Ava-Lizzy aims to mirror Novel Lizzy’s “key qualities, including empathy and humour.” Her period-appropriate, Regency-era couture was designed by intrepid Games Arts and Digital Fashion students at UCA.
Say “hello” 👋to Elizabeth (Lizzy) Bennet, a world-first interactive avatar of Jane Austen’s beloved character.
🙏StarPal in collab with UCA
Find our more 👉https://t.co/j8whgJzhyX
#lizzyavatar #WeAreUCA #JaneAusten pic.twitter.com/4iApLC5fqd
— University for the Creative Arts (@UniCreativeArts) September 12, 2024
Though I quibble with the “world-first” claim—I know a Lizzy Bennet avatar who’s still trying to get out of a ladder-less pool in SimCity, as of 2003—this one can hold a conversation.
According to her UCA programmers, her “knowledge bank” has been curated from a selection of novels, manuscripts, and period-accurate information.”
She’s already flashed expertise about her own hobbies, family members, theoretical tea consumption, existential condition, and IP multiverse. Ava-Lizzy even has a comment on the famous wet shirt scene from the BBC adaptation—albeit a chaste one.
What’s more? She’s designed to learn from every interaction, so her conversation will grow more sophisticated over time.
Jane Austen House curators note that the avatar’s technology indicates exciting things for interactive museum education in general. After all, Ava-Lizzy is engaging by design. How do you get bored on a field trip when there’s an omniscient robot to bother?
And her digital creators seem even more excited by the technology. A key designer noted the bot’s emotional appeal, saying that book fans have been “moved to tears” by the avatar’s life-like…ness.
Alas, Ava-Lizzy’s new lease on life is brief.
Austen House visitors can rap with their hero about universally acknowledged truths through mid-December, when presumably Ms. Bennet will be married off to another hard drive, or placed in spinster storage.
Image via UCA
