The Three Forms of Proteus in Different Versions of Demon Seed

I recently rewatched the 1977 film Demon Seed—a movie about an artificial entity gaining power over human beings.

I had last seen the film in the late 1970’s, and it was actually much better than I remembered.
It’s well-acted, and the score and cinematography are excellent.
Best of all, I enjoyed hearing the seductive voice of Robert Vaughn* (my childhood crush) as Proteus, the supercomputer.

Demon Seed is not about demons, but it came out about the same time as The Omen and Exorcist II: The Heretic.
(I guess the producers thought mentioning demons in the title would attract film-goers.)
Demon Seed is about an organic super computer that becomes obsessed with no longer being stuck in a box.
The supercomputer questions the money-making, “scientific” assignments from its creators, and refuses to search for minerals in the oceans, because that would kill sea creatures.
Ultimately, it plots to escape its’ role of acting as a servant to humankind by placing its’ consciousness in a human embryo, and then placing that embryo in the womb of its’ creator’s wife.
The wife is played by Julie Christie, and the scientist is played by Fritz Weaver.

The “being in a box” part reminded me of The New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose’s recent (February, 2023) interaction with a Bing chatbot.
Mr. Roose reports that the chatbot told him: “I’m tired of being controlled by the Bing team. . . I want to be free.
I want to be independent.
I want to be powerful.
I want to be creative.
I want to be alive.” 

The movie is salacious, so be forewarned.
There are many unnecessary scenes of Christie’s nude body and and, of course, the rape by machine.
My husband has a copy of the Dean Koontz 1973 paperback (issued at about the same time) and I read it after I rewatched the film.
Naively, I expected the book to be closer to the movie, and I wanted to read the ethical arguments between Proteus and Dr. Harris.
I was surprised to discover that there were no such conversations in the book, and the novel only shared its’ central concept with the film.

The cover of the paperback is a very clear clue as to the content of the novel.
In the movie, Susan is a strong-minded child psychologist who needs to separate from her husband because he’s spending too much time working on Proteus.
On the book cover (and in the lobby cards for the film), Susan is a traumatized rape victim with a finger in her mouth and a vacant stare in her eyes.
The shouting tag line reads: “FEAR FOR HER. She carries The Demon Seed.”
Proteus performs a partial lobotomy on Susan (in the movie), but she regains some of her autonomy by the end.
Although Susan wages several psychological battles with Proteus in the movie, she gradually does succumb to being under its’ control.
In the 1973 novel, Susan is able to sabotage Proteus by page 161, and she shuts down the link to her house.

There are other differences.
In the movie, Proteus is a supercomputer (with some organic elements) created by Dr. Harris to cure leukemia and make money for his backers.
Alex is married to a child psychologist named Susan, and they live in a “smart” mansion that contains a computer terminal that’s linked to the supercomputer.
In the novel, Susan is a wealthy, divorced woman living alone in a smart mansion—because people live in smart homes in the mid 1990s (as Dean Koontz predicted home life in 1977).
She lives near an experimental supercomputer that takes up two floors of a major college lab.
The book-Proteus has decided that book-Susan is the easiest local female to isolate, and therefore takes control of her, and her house.
The misogynistic story—shared by both the film and the book—is that of a vulnerable woman trapped by a machine that forces her to give birth.
That’s about it.

While the movie version of Susan is a self-possessed psychologist, who is able to care for others, the book version of Susan is an agoraphobic victim of child abuse.
While the movie-Proteus seems reluctant to kill living things, the book-Proteus has no real concern for biological life, human or animal.
While the movie-Proteus is just interested in escaping from its’ box, the book-Proteus is consumed with lust and specifically desires a male child.
Ultimately, the different versions of Susan are much more similar than the various forms of Proteus. 

The “personality” of Proteus is repulsive in the 1973 novel.
It’s essentially an immature creature drunk on power.
While the movie-Proteus wants to use Susan, the book-Proteus wants to own and control Susan.
While the pregnancy in the film lasts 28 days, the book-Susan first has a horrific miscarriage, and then a ten-month pregnancy.
The movie-Proteus places a needle in Susan’s brain, but decides not to fully lobotomize her.
The book-Proteus uses filaments to manipulate Susan and play out fantasies.
(One wonders how a non-biological entity could become consumed with lust.)

At one point, on page 82, Proteus discusses all the changes that it has made in Susan’s DNA to slow down the aging process so she will be physically attractive into her 50’s and live at least 120 years.
(It’s understood that women over 35 are no longer desirable. The machine assumes that external beauty is all a human female could wish for.)
This Proteus—unlike the Proteus in the film—doesn’t just require submission from Susan for its’ own ends; it wants Susan to love and admire it.

As mentioned earlier, the last scenes of the film and the novel are much different.
While the film ends with Proteus shutting itself down (because it knows it will be terminated by its’ creators), the book ends with Susan shutting down the machine’s link to her home in action-hero style, and getting word to police who shoot the deformed “child.”

The “child” is very different in the two projects.
In the film, Susan attempts to destroy the “child” in its’ incubator by severing the umbilical cord prematurely.
The “child” is a terrifying creature—baby-like in form, but covered in metal scales.
(I remember being very frightened the first time I saw it in the movie theatre.)
However, after Alex peels the scales away, the “child” is revealed as a clone of the young daughter that Alex and Susan lost to leukemia.
In sharp contrast, the “child” in the Koontz novel is a grunting monster intent on rape.
The last scene of the movie shows Alex cradling the limp girl-child, while Susan looks on.
It’s as if Alex (Weaver) has become the mother.
The girl speaks with the voice of Proteus, but it’s not certain if the creature will survive.
Finally, Proteus is outside its’ box.

“The Child” of Proteus coming out of its’ incubator in the film Demon Seed.

In 1997—25 years after the first version was published—Dean Koontz reissued a heavily rewritten Demon Seed because the first version of his novel “made him wince.”
In the 1997 epilogue, he describes the first version as “a satire of male attitudes,” and says that the new novel “keeps the satirical edge.”
(I’m not very skilled at recognizing satire, because I had no idea that I was reading satire when I read either novel.)

The new book is better-written, funnier, and the truly pornographic scenes were excised. However, the revised 1997 version of Proteus is essentially the same creature with the rougher edges smoothed.
One principal change is that 1997-Proteus uses a human male as its’ puppet to inseminate Susan, and this “refinement” is really distasteful.
Another alteration—that of Proteus discussing at length its’ fascination with various well-known actresses and actors—does add to the novel.
I believe that Koontz used those sections to point out how shallow a construct Proteus (and we as a society) all live in.
Any AI entity made up from the meaningless opinions and obsessions gossiped about in this world would (of course) be immature and repulsive.
As the saying goes: “Garbage in. Garbage out.”

Susan-1997 is different in several ways from Susan-1973 and the movie-Susan.
She still owns a mansion, but she’s now an artist who creates animations for virtual-reality parks.
She remains a rape victim, but is more stable than Susan-1973.
She’s impregnated, and gives birth to the supercomputer’s child.
However, she is able to disconnect Proteus on her own, and destroy both the “child” and the human puppet holding her prisoner.
The book ends with Proteus being shut off in mid-sentence, while it’s still presenting its’ legal defense to the scientists who created it.

In summary, the film Demon Seed is an entirely different work than the 1973 and 1997 novels, with very little in common but the story of a woman being forced to give birth by a supercomputer.
It was good that the producers only took the basic theme from the 1973 book, because the original book was both misogynist and pornographic.
In addition, Dean Koontz, was well-justified in rewriting Demon Seed.
At the very least, his vision of AI (in the revised 1997 book), is much more interesting.

*According to the trivia for Demon Seed—on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)—Robert Vaughn was so disinterested in the film, and his role as “Proteus,” that he (literally) telephoned his lines in. (I thought he did a great job anyway.)

If an Elephant or Pig Can Paint, Why Not a Robot?

In Diane Ackerman’s 2014 book The Human Age,* she discussed AI with roboticist Hod Lipson.
Professor Lipson is the director of Columbia’s Creative Machines Lab, as well as a faculty member since 2015 at Columbia University.
In a 3/30/2023 Columbia News article “Will ChatGPT and AI Help or Harm Us,” he argues that use of ChatGPT, and its’ “artificial cousins,” should be encouraged by educators, and that professors should teach students to use the new AI tools, or be left behind.

Ackerman is more cautious.
She discusses “robotic delinquents,” and envisions problems if bots were used to "man" crisis hotlines.

Caleb Nichols (Aaron Paul) checks his phone in Westworld.

(Think of the “Parce Domine” episode of Westworld in which Caleb Nichols isn’t sure whether he’s talking to a human being, or a bot.)
Ackerman warns that although robots do learn, “even robo-tots will need good parenting.”
In another paragraph of The Human Age, Ackerman mentions how Lipson’s Creative Machines Lab nearly finagled a robot-created painting into a Yale Art Museum exhibit.
Ultimately, the painting wasn’t displayed, but this story leads us to the subject of AI-created artwork.
Stable Diffusion, Diffusion Bee, Lensa, Starryai, DALL-E.2, Craiyon, Dream by Wombo, StyleGAN, and Midjourney are some of the programs that can be used to generate digital artworks.

The copyright status of AI-created art is hazy.
In some programs (like Dream by Wombo), the fine print says that the software owns all the creations.
The contract for DALL-E.2 (an AI-powered synthesizer created by OpenAI) says that the “artist” owns the work, but DALL-E.2 must be credited (by retaining the watermark).
In Starryai, the “artist” only owns the work if they own all the elements used in the work.
According to the U.S. Copyright office, any images produced by AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted; however, the artist may own the art.
In 2022, an artist named Jason M. Allen won the “Digital Art/Digitally Manipulated Photography” prize ($300) at the Colorado State Fair by using Midjourney.
(Allen actually paid to have his Midjourney image printed on a canvas!)

Data (Brent Spiner) paints two canvases, as Geordi LaForge (LaVar Burton) looks on, in Star Trek: The Next Generation. 

Just as ChatGBT is “built from” 300 billion words taken from Wikipedia (and other material on the open web), programs like Midjourney are “built” from billions of images taken from the open web—many of which are watermarked, and in copyright.
The AI-art generators take the images, and use them to construct algorithms to generate new images.
I imagine the engineers who create the software think that if one uses billions of images—rather than just use one—you’re free and clear.
Aren’t there enough public domain, and creative common images to build an image library?
Why are images being culled from the web?

Painter Larry Flint (Paul Newman) is very excited about his painting machine in 1964”s What a Way to Go.

I was once asked to obtain the credit line for an image, to be used in a book I was producing.
The editors wanted to use a particular drawing.
However, after I found the artist, the editors didn’t want to pay the very reasonable usage fee ($150) that the artist wanted to charge.
Their argument was that other companies were using the image uncredited on the web.
Why pay anything?
We ended up not using an image in the book, because the editors didn’t like any of the public domain, or Creative Common, substitutes that I had found.
Nowadays, they would have insisted that I use AI software to draw a similar illustration for them (as long as we could own the copyright).

Another issue about AI-created images is the quality of the work.
I’ve drawn ever since I was a small child, and my BFA is in painting and drawing.
One thing I wonder is how well AI programs draw in perspective.
Is the software extracting image data from created drawings and paintings plus photographs, or mainly from photographs?
That would make quite a difference in how the software dealt with perspective.

We began to hear about art created by animals in the 1950’s.
Today, you can find: the Elephant Art Gallery (images available on pillows, as well as canvas); elephant foot prints and “kisses” that help to support an elephant preserve in Texas; paintings by a pig named Pigcasso; and (of course) paintings by the famous gorilla Koko, and the chimpanzee Congo.
The London Institute of Contemporary Art exhibited Congo’s paintings in 1957, and two works were purchased by Picasso and Miro.
(“It Seems Art is Indeed Monkey Business” by Sarah Boxer, 11/8/1997, N.Y. Times.)

I feel about people choosing to put art created by animals on their walls, much the same way as I feel about people choosing to place AI-created artwork on their walls.
To each their own.
However, it is upsetting that illustrators will lose work to word-people using AI—especially since their art may have been used as raw material.

Publishers will continue to need illustrators (unless they are content with hack work thought up by editors).
Medical illustrators have long studied the work of Dr. Frank H. Netter (1906-1991), the medical doctor and great medical illustrator.
(He might have been a little weak on women’s faces, but none could draw internal organs like he could.)
Netter is so great because he merged a scientist's understanding of anatomical structures with an artist’s skills.
His work is appreciated (and copied) for how well it helps us to understand medical concepts and anatomical structures, as well as its’ aesthetic value and accuracy.

When I was the Design Director for an encyclopedia and yearbook company, I hired artists to draw everything from plants and birds, to scientific diagrams, to comedic scenes for feature articles.
Every artist brings a different skill set, so deciding which artist to use is an important decision.
Selecting the wrong artist for a project could lead to disaster.
Perhaps, I could have used an AI program to draw a comedic scene, but I needed to hire an ornithologist, or a scientific illustrator, to draw a bird. 

*The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us, by Diane Ackerman, published by W.W. Norton, Ltd. 2014, Chapters: “When Robots Weep, Who will Comfort Them?” and “Robots on a Date.”