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.

  • mommykink@lemmy.world
    291·
    8 months ago

    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.

    • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      8 months ago

      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?

  • magnetosphere@kbin.social
    2·
    8 months ago

    I know all the good domain names have been taken… but even when scraping the bottom of the barrel, they could have done better than “Dudesy”. What the fuck, people.

      • DontMakeMoreBabies@kbin.social
        44·
        8 months ago

        Demonstrating that an entire job class is about to get fucked into oblivion sure seems subversive to me!

        Also, Carlin is fucking dead. How do you rip off a corpse?

        • mommykink@lemmy.world
          21·
          8 months ago

          username DontMakeMoreBabies

          For some reason I don’t think this is much of a concern for you