A new comedy special starts with the quote, “I’m sorry it took me so long to come out with new material, but I do have a pretty good excuse. I was dead.”
The voice sounds like comedian George Carlin, but that would be impossible, as Carlin died in 2008. The voice in the special is actually generated by an artificial intelligence (AI).
“This is not my father. It’s so ghoulish. It’s so creepy,” Carlin’s daughter, Kelly Carlin-McCall, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
The YouTube account Dudesy, which is described as a podcast, artificial intelligence and “first of its kind media experiment,” released the hour-long special on Jan. 9. CBC reached out to the producers of Dudesy and its co-host Will Sasso for comment, but did not get a response.
Sasso and co-host Chad Kultgen say they can’t reveal the company behind the AI due to a non-disclosure agreement, according to Vice. The channel launched in March 2022.
Carlin-McCall said the channel never reached out to the family or asked for permission to use her father’s likeness. She says her father took great pride in the thought and effort he put into writing his material.
Stuff like this makes me think we’re witnessing so many crimes that we don’t have a names for yet.
Things aren’t crimes until they’re actually made illegal.
Why is this or should be a crime? You wouldn’t call an Elvis impersonator a criminal, why is it different when it comes from a piece of technology?
I get why his daughter finds it creepy, but I just listened to it and I liked it, they don’t seem to be trying to fool anyone and make very clear it’s an ai impersonation. I see it more like a kind of homage or something, it’s not like they’re putting his face on an ad. I don’t think you should need permission from the dead person’s family for this kind of things.
I don’t understand why anyone who was a fan of George Carlin would ever do this… It seems like something someone who didn’t like Carlin would do. What was the point?
What was the point?
Money.
Some also-ran hacks who aren’t fit to be in the same room as Carlin are using him to make a name for themselves and drive views to their bullshit channel.
It is grift, pure and simple.
Boy though I would love to hear Carlin’s opinion on all this AI shit. I think he would get a perverse kick out of seeing himself poorly re-created in such a manner, but I also think he would tear to shreds the kind of people who think it’s a good idea to use it like this.
Skip to 38:00 in “I’m Glad I’m Dead”, there’s a whole segment about it and AI recreations in general.
What was the point?
Like most current demonstrations of AI, it’s just a tech demo. All it’s really meant to do is show off its capabilities. This wasn’t meant to be taken as somebody’s true artistic vision or something.
If it was a tech demo then wouldn’t the company that made it want to take credit? The article said they wouldn’t say which AI they used due to a non disclosure agreement
The show is on Youtube, searching “Duesy Carlin” gets it easily. I’m listening to it and it does seem to be Carlin’s style of humor.
it does seem to be Carlin’s style of humor.
That is irrelevant.
It was not made by Carlin, it is not his work and he or his family did not consent to the production.
And why would they need to consent to it? Do Elvis impersonators need to get consent from his family to dress and and sing and act like him? This is especially true if it isn’t performing his work but new stuff in his style. Comedians learn from each other all the time. Carlin himself had listed a bunch of comedians who have influenced his style.
Your heart is in the right place, and I understand what you’re saying. Impressionists have always been a thing. People who emulate the art styles of greater artists have always been a part of the culture, and should be.
But there’s a critical difference with AI, because it is quickly approaching a point where it can create copies so high-fidelity that they are indistinguishable from the originals. Crucially, they will be doing this with a relatively small amount of actual effort from those who wield them. We need to put protections in place for original creators, or before we even understand what’s happened, all of culture will be driven by AI-produced remixing, and as those technologies are controlled by mega-corporations, everything about art we hold dear will be sold to appeal to algorithms. It’s not too late to put the brakes on yet, but that won’t be true for long.
I think the question as to whether or not it should be illegal is a different question. I could easily be convinced it should. However, I’m hesitant to support making something illegal, especially when it so closely resembles something that is currently legal, simply because of fear of what might happen.
I share your concerns for sure tho.
I’m saying that in reference to the question of whether a fan of Carlin is doing this. It’s Carlin’s style of humor, so it’s likely a fan of Carlin. If it was someone who didn’t like him why would he be accurately emulating his style of humor?
How close it is does not matter.
They are making money off of him, they may be doing it out of fandom but that does not change the fact they do not have the right to do it.
I meant that anyone who ever had an ounce of respect for George Carlin wouldn’t do this. This seems like the exact sort of thing Carlin would have been strongly against if he were still alive
Fans make fanfiction about stuff they have respect for, this could be considered as an extreme sort of fanfiction.
My basic point is that you’re making assumptions about the motivations here that may not be warranted. Whoever made this could well be a genuine George Carlin fan and just wanted to have another new special “by” him.
You’re not wrong to compare this fanfiction.
In that light it’s important to note that fanfiction writers don’t have the right to make money off of their fanfiction without an explicit agreement with the original creator. This shouldn’t be treated any differently.
AI creation is incredible in what it can do, but when it’s this direct of a ripoff, the person it’s ripping off should be granted a share of any money it makes. In this case, that person is dead, and I suspect Carlin didn’t have a high opinion of inheritance and intellectual property estates, but it still feels wrong to profit off of the life work of somebody who was still around in your lifetime.
Standup comedy is meant to be relatable, the best standup material makes fun of the writer’s real experiences and/or common experiences of the audience. This is just my hot take, but I think an AI writing standup comedy is and always will be completely soulless because the AI has never experienced anything and is just putting words together that it doesn’t even know the significance of, and is doing so purely based on the statistics of how real human standup uses those words. Even with AI acting out standup written by humans, they still don’t understand what they’re saying and the emotions they supposedly show are still based on statistics. If you find AI standup funny, you have that right, but I personally don’t and that’s just me.
I think this applies to all forms of art.
I’ve long held this idea of art vs decoration.
For example, my kitchen table has turned legs with a series of convex and concave details along their length. This is not art, it is decoration. It’s unnecessary and merely added a few lengthy steps to the manufacture of the table, but it’s there to look nice. and I think AI can manage that.
I have on my walls a series of lithographs from an artist by the name of Ed Berger, who spent the majority of his career as a civil engineer in Washington DC before retiring to North Carolina to persue his art…which took the form of a series of rural scenes of old and dilapidated homes and farm buildings/equipment in a style I’ve taken to calling “It was dreary when it was new, and NOW look at it.” I’m not sure a computer can create something that says “100 years ago was completely miserable, which is why we abandoned it so thoroughly” as viscerally ol’ Ed did. That’s art.
Carlin-McCall said the channel never reached out to the family or asked for permission to use her father’s likeness.
I smell a lawsuit incoming.
I hope so. It’s so evil to do this without permission.
Evil is a concept created by bronze age illiterates. I don’t see how that has anything to do with this.
It would depend on where the podcasters are based. Some places have really shitty personality or publicity rights laws that expire at death, for example.
Carlin-McCall said the channel never reached out to the family or asked for permission to use her father’s likeness.
Welcome to the world of posthumous digital slavery!
When a person dies, anyone can do what ever they want with their image and life’s work.
Calling this “slavery” is ridiculously overly-emotive. You can’t enslave a dead person.
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. - The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary
I think the term is accurate.
They are using his image and work to create something new without his consent or the consent of his family.
This isn’t George’s labour. It’s the labour of an AI pretending to be George. Is an impressionist also enslaving him?
A dead person is not a person any more. An AI voice emulator is certainly not a person.
Read that first sentence again, out loud. Around your family members.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. Are you saying you think dead people are people?
Your idea that personhood is singularily defined by a physical body with a heartbeat is strange to say the least.
Not what they said, but nice strawman.
So you’re saying that this simple voice emulator is actually a person?
I’m gonna keep a record of your opinion and consult it at the time of your death. We’ll see if you still feel the same when I show you my… Necrofile
…okay? Knock yourself out.
Thanks! You know, the most difficult thing about enslaving the dead is dealing with terrible work ethics. Always laying down on the job.
The dead can’t be enslaved. This is a voice emulator, not a person. It’s baffling that I’m now talking to two people who think this is actually George Carlin somehow.
What’s really baffling is you only think you know what we’ve said without actually taking the time to understand what we’ve said.
Oh come on with a patronising tone. Say what you mean or get the flock out of here
But in strange aeons even death may die.
I just realized Stephen Colbert doesn’t own the rights to himself, so there could be that trainwreck soon as well.
this is what I thought about the post mortem carrie fisher scene as well. It feels ghoulish.
The Carlin script is clearly written by people as there’s phrases he liked to use to describe power that simply weren’t used but it did capture his rhythm pretty well. My guess is they fed the AI with jokes they wrote and had it rewrite them in his style
Interesting concept. I watched the first 10 minutes or so. The video goes to great lengths to clearly describe that this is neither Carlin’s voice or jokes. The material is roughly George Carlin-ish, but not great. The AI voice is not quite believable either.
It’s not really for me, and also not a crime in my view. Just a weird thing someone did.
Honestly it came off on the level of a pretty decent impressionist. Not quite on Carlin’s level, but evocative enough of his patter and sensibility to make me wish it was the real thing, and there were moments in it where I could almost pretend that it was.
Man, I miss Carlin.
It seemed spot-on to me. I’d love to see some double-blind tests done with this, perhaps take an existing Carlin recording and give the AI the transcript to impersonate from. Then let people pick which is which without knowing ahead of time.
Finished watching the second one and it’s actually really good.
Think of how stupid the average AI is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
We really need stronger restrictions on AI usage.
Only for corporate use. Leave the people doing fun non profit parody things alone. Its the people doing this…or stealing someones likenesses to sell a product that need to be regulated
We need but not for this, I would prefer restricting governments and corporations from using it to spy on people.
Why can’t we have both?
The conversation shouldn’t be about restrictions as much as it should be about compensation. AI “art” like this only exists by ripping off original artists.
Yea, we totally should let corporations protect us.
… what
Government restrictions 🙄
Which government? Where I live that’s still a synonym for corporation.
China probably, America sure as fuck won’t lol
Ah, yes, the CCP. Don’t you have Uyghur genocide to apologize for or something, tankie?
Compare Xinjiang province with Gaza if you want to see how fucking stupid the genocide claims against China are, and yet the same countries are defending Israel as it commits open genocide before our eyes. The lies are so fucking obvious at this point, do you not have any shame?
Also, CPC you fucking dork. Communist Party of China. CCP is redscare bullshit meant to make people think of the CCCP lol
Did you know more than one genocide can be happening at once in the world? Surprising, I know!
Fucking tankies. Operating literally on a child’s understanding of the world.
We need the puppets of the corperations to protect us.
Cynicism.
Corporations are creations of government. They can be brought under government control.
Might need a new government though lol
But it’s the governments the ones using AI for the most evil things. Impersonating a dead comedian is a pretty benign use in my opinion.
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Sounded fine to me. I’d like to see double-blind tests of this sort of thing.
This was honestly funnier than most comedy specials I’ve watched on Netflix.
Did AI write the content or only impersonate the voice?
Either way, it worked at making me laugh. It didn’t even need to be “George Carlin”, and it would have been just as funny as just some old guy complaining.
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I watched it and it was pretty good. Yeah, it’s not the same as the real George Carlin but a few of them certainly got be chuckling and resembled reusing his past work in today’s context. The video did start off prefacing that this was an AI and not truly George Carlin so nobody would be fooled that it’s not actually him.
“Carlin” also makes references to his deceased not-really-Carlin state throughout the show, so if you crop off the preface it still wouldn’t fool anyone for long.
Edit: there’s a whole section of the special starting at the 38 minute mark that’s about being dead, and “Carlin” reflecting on what exactly he is and what that means. Just got to that bit, it’s rather good.
So it’s boomer humor? Wow, who would have thought.
I’m sorry, but all the reactionary anger is absurd! This is a fucking beautiful work of art. The publisher didn’t pretend to make this anything more than an obvious AI impersonation and people are acting crazy in response. The jokes were on point and the voice was a little off, but it was a fun experiment.
This will be considered a work of art in ten years and the people who down voted will wonder how their customer service role got replaced.
