{"id":85408,"date":"2023-11-25T03:48:25","date_gmt":"2023-11-25T03:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topmovieandtv.com\/?p=85408"},"modified":"2023-11-25T03:48:25","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T03:48:25","slug":"hands-off-harry-bosch-writer-michael-connelly-is-determined-to-save-his-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topmovieandtv.com\/books\/hands-off-harry-bosch-writer-michael-connelly-is-determined-to-save-his-hero\/","title":{"rendered":"Hands off Harry Bosch – Writer Michael Connelly is determined to save his hero"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Bestselling crime writer Michael Connelly has revealed his will contains strict instructions that no other author can continue the Harry Bosch franchise after his death as he fights a lawsuit accusing artificial intelligence of stealing his work.<\/p>\n

The Bosch Legacy and Lincoln Lawyer creator is part of a class action against OpenAI \u2013 the multi-billion dollar company behind the controversial ChatGPT programme \u2013 for breach of copyright over the use of his novels to teach its own creation how to write. Connelly, 67, has joined forces with some of the world\u2019s biggest literary names \u2013 including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, Jodi Picoult and Game of Thrones creator George R R Martin \u2013 in seeking damages against OpenAI in the US test case.<\/p>\n

He was contacted, he explains, by trade body the Authors\u2019 Guild after its researchers quizzed ChatGPT about Bosch and asked the programme if it could write a sequel to one of Connelly\u2019s novels featuring the relentless LAPD detective.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt said \u2018yes\u2019, so they called me up and told me,\u201d Connelly explains. \u201cThat would freak anybody out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt AI is going to be positive \u2013 it\u2019s already hugely positive in fields like medicine \u2013 but it threatens the creative process and takes people\u2019s creations without consent, compensation or control.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, that\u2019s just wrong. So they didn\u2019t really have to convince me to join the lawsuit. When they told me what was happening with my work, I just said, \u2018I\u2019m in\u2019. When it hit the media, I kind of felt, \u2018Wow, I\u2019m in pretty good company here\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stakes, the former journalist admits, are high for everyone involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re taking on the future, in many ways. I don\u2019t know if some people see this as just a move to get money. To me, it\u2019s about controlling your own creative processes and what happens to what you create.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, I think lives are being saved because of AI in medical applications. So it\u2019s not like I\u2019m mister non-digital or \u00adanti-AI. By coincidence, I have a little bit of a debate about it in my new book.\u201d<\/p>\n

Published earlier this month, Resurrection Walk sees Bosch, now a private detective, and his half-brother Mickey Haller, AKA the Lincoln Lawyer, seeking to free a woman they believe was wrongly jailed for the \u00admurder of her Sheriff\u2019s deputy ex-husband.<\/p>\n

After 40 years of locking up criminals, the ex-homicide detective will only look into cases of convicted people who claim they\u2019re innocent. But the pair suffer a setback when the evidence they believe helps exonerate their client is thrown out of court because AI-related testimony is not yet allowed in Federal cases in the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took DNA a \u00adlong time to be accepted in courts in my country,\u201d says Connelly. \u201cAI will eventually be accepted. It just hasn\u2019t been yet. But that\u2019s the kind of stuff I love doing. Having Mickey think he\u2019s just won the case… then taking it away from him. That kind of stuff is a really fun thing to strategise and write.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the only crossing point between the brilliant new book and the real world, of which more shortly, but continuing on the AI theme, Connelly reveals a clause in his will to stop anyone \u2013 human or computer \u2013 \u00adwriting Bosch after their respective deaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s specific to Bosch. I don\u2019t know what would happen to Mickey Haller or my other characters,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I\u2019ve gotten this opportunity to write about Harry for 30-plus years and I want to end that series. So there should be no reason for him to be dug up from the grave and written about again by somebody else.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talked about it with my family, and said, \u2018If you want to find someone who keeps writing Lincoln Lawyers or whatever, I don\u2019t have a problem with that. I\u2019m not going to be around\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut at the end of my days as a writer, the \u00adcharacter who will stand up for me is Harry Bosch, and I don\u2019t want that devalued by anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Appearing at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate last year, Connelly told a packed audience he\u2019d been thinking for the last decade or so of how he would end the series: \u201cI have been very lucky… being able to write about this character in real-time for 30 years. It seems to me to be my duty to carry it from beginning to end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today he reveals he was closer than he previously admitted to killing off Harry Bosch, who appeared in last year\u2019s Desert Star, world-weary, melancholic and suffering with chronic myeloid leukaemia due to radiation exposure from an \u00adearlier case. And his detective, it emerges, had a fascinating stay of execution.<\/p>\n

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