George Carlin estate sues over fake comedy special purportedly generated by AI
George Carlin estate sues over fake comedy special purportedly generated by AI
The estate of George Carlin has filed a lawsuit over a fake hourlong comedy special that purportedly uses artificial intelligence to recreate the late standup comic’s style and material.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday asks that a judge order the podcast outlet, Dudesy, to immediately take down the audio special, “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” in which a synthesis of Carlin, who died in 2008, delivers commentary on current events.
Carlin’s daughter, Kelly Carlin, said in a statement that the work is “a poorly-executed facsimile cobbled together by unscrupulous individuals to capitalize on the extraordinary goodwill my father established with his adoring fanbase.”
The Carlin estate and its executor, Jerold Hamza, are named as plaintiffs in the suit, which alleges violations of Carlin’s right of publicity and copyright. The named defendants are Dudesy and podcast hosts Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen.
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This is great. There was no reason for there to be any mention of George Carlin in the video's title, especially not crediting it to him and especially not with a title like that. I'm curious if the creator ever sat back and thought that what they were doing was wrong.
A real AI comedian trained by living comedians would be an interesting feat, but coming right out the gate with the first real example being such a blatant theft of likeness sours so much opinion people will have on the idea in the future.
I agree with you, and think that people are overplaying the AI hype. People think that training an AI is like training a human, and that's not really true.
But even if it were, what this guy is doing with his AI goes beyond that. I think anyone would agree that there is nothing preventing a new comedian from binging on all the George Carlin material, then making their own show, under their own name . But if that human literally put on a George Carlin mask and billed their show as "George Carlin", his estate would (rightfully) get upset, even though everyone understands this can't be the real George Carlin. Why should this guy get a pass just because he had an AI do all the hard work of writing the jokes?
Did you try watching it? The first minute or so is nothing but disclaimers that this isn't "really" Carlin, and the AI itself makes numerous jokes about its AI nature throughout the special. There's no false credit going on here.
If the creators didn't get permission to use Carlin's name and image, they deserve to be sued.
They could just as easily have generated an image to use if they didn't want to be taken to court. Instead they will have an expensive FAFO episode.
They could just as easily have generated an image to use if they didn’t want to be taken to court.
I don't know what you mean by this.
AI can be used to generate images of people. So they could have generated an image, put a fake name - or no name at all - on it, and gone ahead with the "comic relief".
Instead they co-opted Carlin's name and face.
Ah. You haven't actually watched the video in question, then. At no point did they ever use Carlin's face.
Nobody should watch it, because AI is bad. /s?
If you're going to complain about things that it did then it kind of behooves you to know whether it actually did them.
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Someone could snip out a joke and claim it was Carlin.
Then that someone has done something wrong.
I could dig up one of your old comments, snip out something from one of them out of context, and use it to defame someone. Should you be hauled off to court for having posted that comment? I haven't even done it yet.