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.
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.
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.
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
Yea, we totally should let corporations protect us.
… what
Government restrictions 🙄
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.
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
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.
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?
I just realized Stephen Colbert doesn’t own the rights to himself, so there could be that trainwreck soon as well.
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.
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.
But you can enslave their likeness
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
If you don’t think that, stop acting like you do
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labor. - 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.
Are you serious?
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?
Most people show bias towards those they know personally. Family, friends, lovers, there’s a type of connection that will make us value some people over complete strangers.
And when these loved ones pass away, treating their remains with the respect we had for them when they lived is our way of reconciling with their permanent departure.So if someone were to trample upon those emotions and personal investment, the disrespect won’t just be towards the people we knew, but also to ourselves.
That’s one reason why dead people are people. Why living people are people. Why people are people. Empathy. Emotional damage. Elevated consciousness. Essentials of individualism. Etcetera.
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?
This isn’t George’s labour. It’s the labour of an AI pretending to be George. Is an impressionist also enslaving him?
But in strange aeons even death may die.
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.
Think of how stupid the average AI is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Stuff like this makes me think we’re witnessing so many crimes that we don’t have a names for yet.
You wouldn’t download a person!
Eh, I think this is just intellectual property right infringement with a side of being an insensitive dumbass and not really that new. Like, how is this any different than someone dressing up in a George Carlin costume and doing their George Carlin impression for an hour? Shouldn’t be using George Carlin’s name to sell your stuff, but it’s not like anyone got enslaved or he dug up Carlin’s corpse or anything.
e; I’m not sure if this detail changes anything, but did the AI write these jokes or just do the voiceover work? I was under the impression that it just did the voice and another human wrote the material
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 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.
