A New Take on Celebrity

[Mal]

I woke up this morning with what I think is a very intriguing question for the awesome group of readers and writers here at AFF. So here goes: Recently TV shows like HBO’s Westworld, and video games such as Bethesda’s Fallout have been exploring themes such as AI (artificial intelligence) and synthetic robots that are fully capable of emulating human behavior and appearance. This morning, I had the thought what if the protagonist from my story, Billion Dollar Harem, an eccentric billionaire, was also a genius with advanced degrees in programming and robotics. He then used his brilliance to instead of kidnapping celebrities used it to build a synthetic robot harem with androids who were designed to look like and were programmed to believe they were celebrities. So, instead of capturing and imprisoning someone like Emma Watson, he built a robot who was identical in appearance to her and who believed she was her. This would allow for vast differences in personality and mannerisms than the actual celebrity. But also, it would allow for some separation from the problem of dealing with actual celebrities. I imagine the story could have fun little problems where the celebrity android’s AI acts up causing them to behave in odd and unexpected ways and the protagonist’s sometimes rough handling of them would require him to occasionally replace pieces of their hardware. Thus the story could focus just as much on them being androids as it does on them being recreations of celebrities. 

While I think a story like this could raise some interesting questions, my biggest question is in what archive would a story with these parameters be placed? On the one hand, it features an original character and is set in the real world as opposed to a fictional one. On the other, it does feature “celebrities,” albeit robot ones designed to appear real.  So? Original or Celebrity? Discuss.

Edited July 23, 2018 by Mal

[BronxWench]

It’s a very interesting spin on the notion of celebrity, and what that encompasses. Is it the actual person, or the persona we’ve assigned to them which is famous?

Speaking as a moderator, I would still ask that the story be placed in the Celebrity subdomain, simply because the androids will have the appearance and names of the actual celebrity. That’s the entire point of the android, after all—to replace the actual person with something which can be owned and manipulated without fear of arrest for unlawful imprisonment, assault, et cetera. If the android resembled my neighbor, an attractive young woman of no celebrity or notoriety, there would not be the same level of interest from the eccentric billionaire, I suspect. His attraction is to the actual celebrity, and he’s found a work-around to let him have his cake and eat it, too.

As a reader, and as a writer. it’s a fun concept because it does explore what we mean by fame, and what it is we expect from those we have chosen to make famous. I wonder if at some point his interest would expand to those we deem notorious—famous for all the wrong reasons. That would be as fascinating, really. 

[JayDee]

Similar to BW, I think celebrity because it’s still, ultimately, about the celebrity  – just nested a level down – I figure the robot is effectively a fan work of the celebrity within the story universe,  and then the story is about this celebrity fan work. I’d say it would be the same with fiction, if you had an eccentric billionaire genius comics fan create a Life Model Decoy of Nick Fury to fondle, you’d put it on Marvel rather than originals.

Robots definitely seem like a lot less hassle for the kidnapper/rapist of leisure tbh, unless they have the ability to grow and learn and go all SkyNet and then, suddenly, eccentric billionaire wakes up to find his harem has broken their programming, taken control of his security systems, and want to play 3D Monster Maze with him. Would be one outcome. You could definitely have a lot of fun with the concept I’m sure. Wind up all your readers with an april fools update with “My god! They were robots all along! And so was I!” Or maybe not

Hey, Spike tried the “robot version to fuck” with Buffybot! [off topic] And from that, and it being Mal’s topic. I remembered the memory of a story I read a long time ago of a Buffy/Firefly crossover with BuffyBot being found ad reactivated in the far future by Jayne. It was short but funny and didn’t linger on how the fuck Jayne would manage it. Shit, I hope I reviewed.[/off topic]

[Desiderius Price]

How would “age” work in such a context?  I mean, even if the actor’s being modelled as 21, the android would essentially be a new born thus warranting [minor1] (unless the inventor waited 14-18 years on their creation...) ????

[BronxWench]

Androids, being constructs and not living beings, don’t require an age tag per se. However, the AFF basic rules forbidding any portrayal of a real person under the age of 18 still apply, so no android of a celebrity who’s under 18 at present is allowed.

[Anesor]

There’s have to be some kind of learning on top of the celeb template. You probably don’t want the bot to forget things that happen or please the owner.  And the core programs would overlap, leaving interesting code bugs like shutting down in electrical storms for safety or walking into wall when seeing a banana peel on the ground.

I would be interested in when a bot, and probably all the bots finally leave the Turing test behind, and become aware instead of very mobile blowup dolls. What happens is one learns the real one is alive and well and had a baby out there? Or if they realize the odd in no period or babies? Even if there is no overt rebellion (Asimov’s laws) that doesn’t mean it will be easy...