Can AI allow us to resurrect Charles Dickens? Wigtown Book Festival and author Philip Ardagh aim to find out with an experiment to bring back one of the greatest authors of all time.
This special event will see how convincing artificial intelligence can be when asked to make the leap from telling youabout a figure from history, to being that person.
As book festival Q&A sessions go it will be tricky, risky – and fun.
Adrian Turpin, Wigtown Book Festival artistic director, explains: “It’s easy to get an AI to give detailed information about Dickens’ life and work – the system has ingested all his work and most biographies and criticism.
“The challenge is to make our Dickens reply like a real author, evasions and uncertainties included. It’s unlikely that Dickens would have been completely open about his relationships with women or happily quote every negative review.
“And how could we capture his showmanship and self-regard without making him a whiskery pastiche? Similarly, how much should our Dickens know about his legacy.
“We could limit his knowledge to 1870 when he died, but it’s more fun to have a Dickens who can comment on films of his life, Freudian interpretations of his work or today’s urban social ills.
“Too much posthumous knowledge, however, and he stops being Dickens. We’re aiming for a time-travelling Victorian, a tourist in the digital age.”
There are also technical challenges because while the AI being used responds well to speech it can only answer in writing.
Adrian said: “We needed someone to play Dickens – so we called on renowned children’s author Philip Ardagh, partly because he has the gravitas of a great writer but mainly because he has a big beard and a vaguely Dickensian wardrobe, is game for most things, and can read.
“It’s an experiment, a bit of fun and we expect things to go wrong. A big challenge for the chair, author and critic Stuart Kelly, could simply be stopping the AI going totally off-piste and hallucinating.”
While the experiment is for entertainment it raises a multitude of questions about the rapid advance of AI and its potential impact on all our lives.
Philip said: “I’ve been a fan of Charles Dickens since childhood. He’s one of the inspirations for my Eddie Dickens series of children’s books which ended up in 35 different languages. I’ve also been a fan and regular contributor to the Wigtown Book Festival for many years.
“What I’m NOT a fan of is AI being used to ‘write’ novels and ‘draw or paint’ illustrations… so I’m taking part in this experiment with mixed feelings but real interest. It should be a fun evening.”
Wigtown Book Festival 2025 is from 26 September to 5 October in Scotland’s National Book Town.
It embraces a world of ideas, experiences and storytelling with a compelling more than 200 events that feature everything from famous faces and fireworks to fictional and real-life tales and steamy goings on in a mobile sauna.
It’s also a chance to explore the characterful rural Galloway town which despite having a population of under 1,000 is home to around 18-book shops and related business.
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- For more about Wigtown Book Festival see www.wigtownbookfestival.com
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Wigtown Festival Company Ltd, 26 South Main Street, Wigtown, Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland, UK, DG8 9HN. Wigtown Festival Company Ltd is a company limited by guarantee with charitable status. Scottish Charity No. SCO3798