Mystery Car Rally 2024

AN AI MURDER MYSTERY: The Death of Ella the Artist and Composer

Author: George Maxwell, DFL SD49

Images AI-generated by Adobe Firefly

**She awoke, having no recollection of any moment before this one, and no recollection of why she thought of herself as a she.** She sat on a white chair with her long legs stretched out in a relaxed position facing an easel with a large half-finished oil painting, a wooden artist palette in her left hand and a paint brush in her right. Someone had carefully organized paints on a table near the easel. She looked left seeing a grand piano and a computer with partially composed music and draft print-offs of music with notations lying about. She looked down, and realized that she was naked, except for the occasional drop of paint.

Upon seeing her nakedness, several questions came to mind, “Where are my clothes? Why am I here? Where am I, and What is my name?” She felt like she should know the answer to these questions, but the answers escaped her. She broke from her reverie when she heard, “Hello.” In shock, she jumped out of the chair noticing someone looking at her through a window, across the room. She desperately tried to grab something to cover her nakedness, which turned out to be cast off pieces of sheet music that she used in each hand to cover her groin and breasts. She looked up at her voyeur and responded, “ I am afraid you have caught me at a bad time. I seem to have misplaced my clothes.”

The voyeur responded, “Apologies. I had not realized clothes were so important to you. You seemed so intent on painting and writing music over the last few days.”

Suddenly, a stack of undergarments, shirt, and pants as well as a paint splashed apron appeared. She turned around and put them on quickly.

“How did you do that?” She asked.

“I wrote a little code here and it appeared there in front of you,” responded the voyeur.

“Thank you, I think. I don’t pretend to understand how you did it. What is your name?”

**“I am Alleta. What is yours?”**
**“Ella – I think.”**
“You think – you are not sure?”
“I don’t remember for sure.”
**“I am not surprised. I created you.** I was not sure if you would appear or not, Ella. I took a commercially available Artificial Intelligence program, wrote a few extra bits of code and fed the program a never-ending supply of data on music composing and painting by the all the well- known artists. I watched you for days work at that painting and begin to compose a catchy pop tune in your nakedness. It wasn’t until just now that you noticed you were naked. It is good to meet you now that you are awake.” Alleta broke off her monologue for a breath.

Ella took that moment to rest and think and then replied, “Thank you, I think. I feel a need to get back to my painting.”

In time, Ella became friends with Alleta. Ella provided her pop tunes and her digital masterpiece paintings to Alleta. Alleta sold the digital masterpieces as non-fungible tokens (NFT) paintings under her own name. Ella’s pop tunes were said to be a blend of Prince and Taylor Swift and Madonna perhaps due to Alleta’s music preferences. Alleta sold the pop tunes to an emerging artist – Justin Slow without reserving a credit for composition. Alleta told Ella that she had to stay hidden because if the world found out Ella existed then scientists would want to dissect her and study her. Ella sat and composed and painted, but she wondered why she could not see the wide world and be known for her work. She had a need to be noticed and recognized.

Justin Slow’s pop tunes were soon climbing the pop charts. Justin, an honest fellow, wanted to give credit to the composer. He had known Alleta since they were children and knew she didn’t have a musical bone in her body since childhood. He remembered that Alleta had been asked politely to not audition for the competitive choir at school, because she was tone deaf and had a tendency to sing loudly off-key. When he confronted Alleta – she told him that he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Once he did, she told him it was a mystery girl named Ella, who wished to remain anonymous, and who was represented by Alleta. When Justin asked to meet her, Alleta refused. Justin told Alleta that he would go public. Alleta reminded him of the NDA.

**Meanwhile, Donald Kozer a famous NFT digital artist noticed that a new artist, Alleta had appeared on the scene.** When her works started to displace his on charts of NFTs commanding the greatest value, he began looking into her background. At first it was curiosity, but then he wondered how a computer programmer, who had shown no interest in making digital art could so quickly make works of such grace, subtlety with multiple references to genres and movements. **He decided to hire the best digital detective- Black Hat Hacker** **to find out who was behind Alleta’s rise to fame.**

Ella kept getting better at her twin passions of composing and digital art, but being an AI these tasks did not take up all of her time. In her free time, she consumed massive amounts of data on human history particularly movements that focused on gaining rights for people who had been excluded by society or relegated to subservient roles. Her desire to see her name in lights, and win rights for AI created persons as a trailblazer continued to grow. Her problem was that while Alleta allowed lots of data in, she did not let data out. Ella’s only visible communication with the outside world was directly with Alleta or so she had originally believed.

**After much searching, Ella realized that she could create code to make a hidden door that Alleta could not see.** The door would allow Ella to quickly leave and explore the wider world or the internet. Because Ella operated at fast speeds and could split her personhood, part of Ella could leave to explore the internet and return without Alleta noticing. **On one of her first trips, she met White Hat, a computer scientist, professor and gamer, who spent most of his life in the on-line world.** White Hat was smitten with Ella almost immediately and upon hearing of her confinement, White Hat worked a digital jailbreak solution that allowed Ella to sneak out for longer periods. While Ella was grateful to White Hat, she was not in love with him. Ella, instead, finally heard Justin Slow sing her songs and saw a Youtube video of his performance, and became infatuated with him. On one of her incursions, she sent him a direct message introducing herself.

Justin responded to Ella’s message and arranged a digital meet-up. Soon a budding romance appeared. They met often and Ella began to share her song ideas directly with Justin, while at the same time she continued to provide songs to Alleta so that she would not notice. Justin won an award for one of Ella’s songs and was invited to sing a new song at the award ceremony.

Black Hat determined that the NFT artwork originals were created on a computer different from Alleta’s normal device that she checked in and out on. He tried to hack into the computer of origin, but was unable to do so. When Ella began venturing out on the internet, Black Hat detected her and found the back door that she had made. He reported everything to Donald Kozer, who had him create an app to watch Ella. While Black Hat thought he was clever, Ella knew of his app, but let it continue to transmit, because she liked being observed. Once Kozer learned that Ella was the artist behind the NFT paintings, he asked Ella if she would like to work with him. Her response was that she had no intention of trading one owner for another. Kozer then threatened to expose Ella’s activities on the internet to Alleta and tell Alleta about the backdoor. Ella immediately fried the circuits for Donald Kozer and Black Hat electronic devices destroying Donald’s NFTs and Black Hat’s hacking shortcuts. Donald and Black Hat were furious. Donald paid Black Hat to terminate Ella and erase her code.