2y ago

George Carlin AI comedy special is 'ghoulish' and 'creepy,' his daughter says

www.cbc.ca /radio/asithappens/ai-comedy-george-carlin-1.7082516

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.

160 comments

I don't care about the technology. I don't even care if it's funny. It's in terrible taste.
If you have a funny standup set, do your routine yourself. If you want funny topical comedy, there are literally dozens of comedians alive today you can watch right now on multiple streaming services and YouTube.
There is no reason to do this other than to be tasteless.
I don't believe in blasphemy, but if I did, putting words in the mouth of an incredibly insightful genius and presenting it as his words would be blasphemy.
- If Carlin himself approved it before dying, I might listen to it. But nope. You said it yourself. Plenty of living talent right now.
  
  They should have done this with the last Norm MacDonald special that he recorded during the pandemic. Use the same words, but put him in front of an audience.
- There is no reason to do this other than to be tasteless.
  Greed?
  
  I'd call greed being tasteless, but I guess we could count it as a second reason.
- Jay Leno bitched that he was annoyed when someone would put on a comedy album for friends, and 'try to take the credit' for being funny.
  This kind of feels like a logical extension of that.
- Well they aren't trying to pass this off as Carlin's material. The video starts and ends with a disclaimer saying that it's an AI generated impersonation.
  What if this set was entirely written and performed by a human but in the style of George Carlin? Is that as tasteless?
  
  A little, but not as much as if they were pretending to be George Carlin. I don't think a disclaimer somehow doesn't make it tasteless. Imagine it wasn't Carlin or even a comedian. Imagine if it was, since his day is coming up, Martin Luther King, Jr.? An AI MLK that delivers a speech that is an original speech but similar to one of his, but with a disclaimer that it wasn't a real MLK. Tasteless? I sure as hell think so.
- I agree with you on that. I do wonder how you would feel if GC had written all the material himself and they used the ai to bring his last planned show to life?
  
  George Carlin was a dedicated wordsmith. After he dropped the Hippy Dippy Weatherman schtick, he realized if he was going to be a comedian he needed to find an angle and chose language; the way we manipulate language to influence and oppress people fascinated him and he dedicated the rest of his career to exploring it on his specials, standup and in his books. He went from using the same act every time, to intentionally starting from scratch for each new project - he forced himself to build new content instead of reusing stuff, and it made him a much better comedian.
  George Carlin did write all the material, the 'developer' of this trained it on his standup shows.
  GC was not a fan of technology for it's own means, and he very much appreciated craft.
  I think he'd start by giving this shit two big middle fingers.
  
  I don't know because I really don't think that sounds like Carlin would do. It's kind of like asking what if the Pope was a Muslim.
  
  Not OP but for me, I think it pivots on the permission of those who knew the comedian best and who might be hurt the most by not asking.
  Whether AI writes the jokes, some 3rd party, or the comedian themself did, does the family want that out there, or would it be painful for Robin Williams’ family (remember that he killed himself) to watch a computer ape Williams’ comedy? If you’ve had a loved one pass away, would you want to be asked before someone made an AI of them performing jokes? And would it make it better or worse if the AI did an inferior job of replicating the original person?
  Even if Carlin had planned a show, if the wishes of the family were that it be performed by Carlin himself or nobody, then I don’t think anyone had the right to turn an AI loose on the material to “give it a shot”.
  Beyond that, I wonder if they have the legal right to use Carlin’s likeness, mannerisms, etc.
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!
  
  Some might, I think we’re coming up on an interesting ethical impasse with this tech
  
  You wouldn't upload a person to the cloud
- 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
- 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.
  
  Because it doesn't come from a person. Sure, a person wrote the script and handles the generator. But we haven't decided yet as humans whether something made entirely by the machine with minimum human input counts yet as agency.
  When a human impersonates a celebrity, it's partially imperfect. There's a person underneath that can't hide and, most importantly, someone we can engage with in good faith to discern intent. They can tells us whether it's satire, admiration, greed or whatever. Things we can relate to.
  When a machine does it, it usually is way too pitch perfect. And it's separate one or two degrees from the initiator, the person running the model, posting, etc. This makes it fall on the uncanny valley. The machine cannot be asked for its intention, it has no emotions, it conceals no motive, it posses no goal. You have to hunt down the owner and this makes it so the machine is perceived as a soulless puppet. You cannot relate nor empathize with its product. It's a nothing imitation, with no art or passion.
  Part of this is because he is not doing a Carlin comedy routine, he's writing and putting words, implying thoughts and beliefs into Carlin's voice. This is fundamentally different and more transgressing of Carlin's legacy. An Elvis impersonator, sings Elvis songs as Elvis had sung them. They don't write new original songs then try to pass them at if Elvis is now singing, and implicitly endorsing, new material.
  Then on the topic of whether it's a crime, it's only if there's genuine intent. Entertainment and satire are some of the valid reasons. And even then, there are people who disagree and find them tasteless and disrespectful. This is not new, not everyone is happy to see their passed away loved ones or idols be mocked or reanimated as puppets.
- Things aren't crimes until they're actually made illegal.
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.
- 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.
- 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
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.
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.
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.
  
  You can’t enslave a dead person.
  Give the investor class time.
  
  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
  
  But in strange aeons even death may die.
  
  But you can enslave their likeness
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.
Think of how stupid the average AI is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
- 🪙🪙🪙
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.
- It doesn't sound at all like him and the laugh track is just the insult cherry on top.
  
  I was thinking it kinda did, but kinda didn’t, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. Someone in another post nailed it for me. Whoever made this used all of George’s stand up specials to train the AI on his voice and cadence, so George of course sounded young in his early work and old in the later ones. The AI mixed that together, so you get a voice that’s not quite his younger voice and not quite his older voice either. That made perfect sense to me why it sounds like George, but still a little off.
- "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.
- Sounded fine to me. I'd like to see double-blind tests of this sort of thing.
I just realized Stephen Colbert doesn't own the rights to himself, so there could be that trainwreck soon as well.
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.
- No. This is not a "fucking beautiful work of art." This is mediocre comedy put in the mouth of a dead genius.
  If you want a fucking beautiful work of art, here's 58 of them: https://www.discogs.com/artist/435995-George-Carlin
  
  I'm not saying the standup is genius. The experiment is! If you ever worked with LLMs or reinforced machine learning, you don't recognize the talent of the poster. This was not produced with off the shelf commercial products, the creator did a nice job creating a mediocre stand-up, using tech genius.
- 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.
  
  The people who hate AI or rather LLMs and machine learning, are the same people who were against color television or radio. I don't mind the down votes, history will mock these types as well.
- I LOL'd on more than one occasion. I am at conflict with the lack of permission, but I don't disagree that it sounded like Carlin.
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
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.
- its honestly good
  1% george carlin Ai is better than most Ai
  he absolutely hand wrote the jokes but had to use technology for the voice it seems. ithink
- I watched about a third of it. It's actually not too bad. It has some of that Carlin wit to it. I like the transition from God inventing cancer to "America gets a special way to die, though, MASS SHOOTINGS" - that was the big one that made me say "Wow. George would have definitely done a skit about mass shooting like this."
  The reality TV bit, though, I dunno. George was a BIG fan of "the freak show" that was life, so he might have actually been a bit more positive about it. Also, the parts about your vote not mattering, that was pretty spot on. George admitted he doesn't vote and it was because he felt it didn't matter, and he also didn't want to take part in society the way it is

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