George Carlin Estate Files Lawsuit Against Group Behind AI-Generated Stand-Up Special: ‘A Casual Theft of a Great American Artist’s Work’
George Carlin Estate Files Lawsuit Against Group Behind AI-Generated Stand-Up Special: ‘A Casual Theft of a Great American Artist’s Work’
George Carlin's estate has filed a lawsuit against the creators behind an AI-generated comedy special featuring a recreation of the comedian's voice.
George Carlin Estate Files Lawsuit Against Group Behind AI-Generated Stand-Up Special: ‘A Casual Theft of a Great American Artist’s Work’::George Carlin's estate has filed a lawsuit against the creators behind an AI-generated comedy special featuring a recreation of the comedian's voice.
I'm torn. I can see why they would be upset. And they may have a case with likeness rights.
But at the same time, this specific example isn't trying to claim any kind of authenticity. It goes out of its way to explain that it's not George. It seems clearly to be along the lines of satire. No different than an impersonator in a SNL type sketch.
I guess I don't have any real problem with clearly fake AI versions of things. My only real problem would be with actual fraud. Like the AI Biden making calls trying to convince people not to vote in a primary. That's clearly criminal fraud, and an actual problem.
Ive been thinking about this a lot and if you think about this like they are selling a stolen product then it can be framed differently.
Say I take several MegaMan games, take a copy of all the assets, recombine them into a new MegaMan game called "Unreal Tales of MegaMan". The game has whole new levels inspired by capcom's Megaman. Many would argue that the work is transformative.
Am I allowed to sell that MegaMan game? I'm not a legal expert but I think the answer to that would generally be no. My intention here is to mimic a property and profit off of a brand I do not own the rights too.
Generative AI uses samples of original content to create the derivative work to synthesize voices of actors. The creator of this special intention is to make content from a brand that they can solely profit from.
If you used an AI to generate a voice like George Carlin to voice the Reptilian Pope in your videogame, I think you would have a different problem here. I think it's because they synthesized the voice and then called it George Carlin and sold it as a "New Comedy Special" it begins to fall into the category of Bootleg.
It's worth pointing out here that this script was probably written by a human.
Edit: reporting now indicates that it was human written https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/01/george-carlins-heirs-sue-comedy-podcast-over-ai-generated-impression/
I'll take Lawyers Maximizing Billable Hours for $500, Alex
Internet: this is awful, of course your inheritors own your own image as stewarts.
Also Internet: I have a right to take pictures of you, your car, your house, or record you without consent. Edit it however I want. Make as much money as I want from the activities and you have no rights. Since if technology allows me to do something you have no expectation that I won't.
We are demanding that a public figure who is dead have more rights than a private person who is alive.
Good. I sincerely hope they win.
I don't think individuals can or should own tones of voice just like bands shouldn't own a guitar tone.
Same goes for their style, which is what was copied by training on his material.
But using his name and photo, and coasting on his popularity in such a way is imo infringement.
I'd have sympathy if this was about a grieving family wanting to be left alone, but it looks more like the "estate" wanting money. At least they aren't going after total nobodies. (Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen)
I've watched it on YouTube, it's pretty good. It starts "this is an impersonation of George Carlin". Wonder if a court ruling would prevent human impersonation.
George Carlin was all about lawsuits and money, great way to honor him. /S
Good. Can't wait for Nintendo to sue Palworld, too. All this AI garbage needs to be put in it's place.
I think AI will win this fight. We're equiped with buckets to fight a tsunami.
AI of today is the worst it will ever be and it's already pretty fucking good. I expect that in the next 5 to 20 years most if not all the best content will be AI generated and I'm excited for it. I feel for the artists that will suffer because of it but I can't see how we're going to stop it or why we even should.
‘A Casual Theft of a Great American Artist’s Work’
Except.... maybe not?
Dudesy started an "AI podcast" as in a podcast "generated by AI" back when GPT-3 was just coming out. Their first episode included an extensive discussion of kayfabe. In other words, an elaborate hoax, using more traditional voice-masking tools, to record a human-written (perhaps AI-assisted?), human-voice, speaking the lines and having Carlin's voice replace the original voice speaking.
Long article, but worth the read. Certainly seems like kayfabe to me.
It’s also worth remembering the context around AI at the time Dudesy premiered in March 2022. The “state of the art” public AI at the time was the text-davinci-002 version of GPT-3, an impressive-for-its-day model that nonetheless still utterly failed at many simple tasks. It wouldn’t be until months later that a model update gave GPT-3 now-basic capabilities like generating rhyming poetry.
When Dudesy launched, we were still about eight months away from the public launch of ChatGPT revolutionizing the public understanding of large language models. We were also still three months away from Google’s Blake Lemoine making headlines for his belief that Google’s private LaMDA AI model was “sentient.”
The strongest evidence that the Dudesy AI is just a bit, though, comes later in that first episode. It starts with a lengthy discussion of kayfabe, a popular professional wrestling term that Sasso extends to include any form of entertainment that is “essentially holding up the conceit that it is real… if you're watching a movie, the characters don't just turn to you and say, ‘Hi, my name is Tom Cruise’… he's an actor.”
Kultgen links the kayfabe concept to one of his favorite reality shows, saying, “For The Bachelor, most of that audience believes it's real. Almost none of the WWE audience believes it's actually real.”
That’s when Sasso all but gives up the game, as far as Dudesy is concerned. “Of course nobody believes [the WWE] is real,” he says. “It's not about it being real. It's sort of a... you know, they say it's like a burlesque for guys. And that's what Dudesy is, a burlesque for guys.”
When I first approached Willison with the question of whether a current AI could write the Dudesy-Carlin special, he said he’d “expect GPT-4 to be able to imitate [Carlin’s] style pretty effectively… due to the amount of training data out there.” Indeed, if you ask ChatGPT-4 for some Carlin-esque material, you’ll get a few decent short-form observations, though none of the vulgarity and little of the insight that characterizes a true Carlin bit.
After watching a bit more of the special, though, Willison said he grew skeptical that GPT-4 or any current AI model was up to the task of creating the kinds of jokes on offer here. “I've poked around with GPT-4 for jokes a bunch, and my experience is that it's useless at classic setup/punchline stuff,” he said.
Willison pointed specifically to a Dudesy-Carlin bit about the potential for an AI-generated Bill Cosby (“With AI Bill Cosby, you get all of the Cosby jokes with none of the Cosby rapes”). Willison said he’s “never managed to get GPT-4 (still the best available model) to produce jokes with that kind of structure… when I try to get jokes out of it, I get something with a passable punchline about one out of ten times.”
While Willison said that Dudesy’s Carlin-esque voice imitation was well within the capabilities of current technology, the idea that an AI wrote the special was implausible. “Either they have genuinely trained a custom model that can generate jokes better than any model produced by any other AI researcher in the world... or they're still doing the same bit they started back in 2022,” he said.
I don't think individuals should own their tone of voice or style. I've seen the copyright abuse on YouTube and it would end up with videos being taken down the moment you utter a word with a tone of voice that sounds mildly like a celebrity.
I do believe they should own their name though. Getting sued because you try to pass yourself off as someone else is completely justifiable. This video is coasting off his name, it isn't exactly right.
As long as it's presented honestly, I don't have a problem with this. It's really no different from:
Or:
Or: