AI-Generated George Carlin Drops Comedy Special That Daughter Speaks Out Against: ‘No Machine Will Ever Replace His Genius’

DLSantini , 5 months ago

Why do all of the comments make it seem like people think that someone asked chatgpt to write a George Carlin routine or whatever? A human person, not a computer, wrote some comedy in (what they felt) was in the style of George Carlin. The technology portion of this was the cloning of Carlin’s voice to “perform” the routine. And you can feel however you want about either part of that. I mean, seems like you’d have to be pretty far up your own ass to think you can just put your own words into the mouth of someone else, especially someone who is no longer in a position to call you a fucking idiot, or not. But the story that people are commenting on, sure seems to be quite different to the actual events that occurred.

As far as the actual story, they know what they did. They know full well that they could have actually did a Carlin impersonation if they had wanted. They could have written their material, went up on stage, said exactly want they were doing, performed their bit, dressed up for the part, hitting as many of the mannerisms as they could. A real, actual, proper attempt at an impersonation. They could have done that, and almost no one would have cared. A few people might have been upset about it, as there always are. But largely, no one would have batted an eye.

But they didn’t do that. They did this. They did this, knowing full well that the claim of it being an “impersonation” was bullshit. And knowing full well what the response would be. And it was exactly the response they wanted. All of the attention and outrage they are getting directed at them right now? That was the point.

unreasonabro , 5 months ago

Honestly he’s a fairly offensive choice as a first target for this sort of venture, but I haven’t watched the thing yet. Doesn’t seem likely it’ll be full of the cutting political satire we associate with him, and the jokes I’ve seen posted from it are tepid af.

Wytch , 5 months ago

• fightin’
• cryin’
• fuckin’
• dyin’

Lightrider , 5 months ago

Fuckingcapitalists

FlyingSquid , 5 months ago

This is in very poor taste.

Leg , 5 months ago

I listened to the whole special, and I can agree with much of what the Carlinbot had to say. I think that’s fun.

I know there’s overwhelming hatred towards the idea of AI doing stuff like this, but I’m curious as to why exactly that is. I hate this about as much as I hate impressionists, which is a somewhat apt comparison. That is to say, I think it’s pretty neat and I’m curious what all went into making it happen, so I can’t say I hate it. Could someone break down why this is awful? Is it a “let the dead lie” kind of thing, keeping the dead sacred? Do we want the AI to be completely original, despite it being derivative in nature? Do we simply want AI not to exist at all? Is it just in poor taste? If so, who do we let define what constitutes good or poor taste?

I see AI as a philosophical issue, as it’s a technology seeking to cross the uncanny valley and simulate consciousness as we understand it, which has serious implications regarding the nature of consciousness, the concept of the self, how we define life and understanding, how much control we grant this artificial life, what rights artificial life should have, and plenty of other conundrums along the way. I honestly don’t think it’s as simple as “Carlin wouldn’t like this”, as this video is ultimately an unsatisfactory impression of a man that only goes on for one hour. There are worse things in the world we could be lambasting (as the Carlinbot points out mid-video), but there are clearly some implications involved that people are very upset by. So, where do we go from here?

Uglyhead , 5 months ago

So, where do we go from here?

I do not kno. Though, I for 1, support all future Cockatrice.

corsicanguppy , 5 months ago

I do not kno. Though, I for 1, support all future Cockatrice.

What bizarre comment combination has a spelling error, a lazy one=>1 macro and the word cockatrice?

Uglyhead , 5 months ago

Funny that, ay?

It’s a play on the cockatrice vs basilisk theory, in context with AI

OnToTheFuture , 5 months ago

For me it’s a let the dead lie kind of thing. This kind of stuff just means that once a comedian or celebrity dies, a company can continue to squeeze their likeness to death in a money grab. Sure if they could stop at half assed AI shows just as a “can it really be done” thing, then it’s not so terrible. But each time they’re going to be doing their damnedest to improve it.

Eventually we will reach a dystopia where 1) just because you’re dead doesn’t mean it’s over and 2) why get new talent and new blood when there’s dead blood to keep squeezing. Next up stars will have issues where when they go to sign a contract, they have to make sure their families get portions of profits from AI content for literal decades after their death. Otherwise the big companies get to keep making money off them with no protection for their family.

witheyeandclaw , 5 months ago

People are using his likeness to gain attention and probably money. They could go and record those jokes and rants themselves but nobody would be interested in listening.

Cethin , 5 months ago

I see AI as a philosophical issue, as it’s a technology seeking to cross the uncanny valley and simulate consciousness as we understand it…

These things called AI are not conscious, nor are they supposed to be. They’re large language models that do text based prediction. They aren’t aware of what they’re saying, what it means, or the context they exist within. They just recreate patterns that it’s seen before. Artificial general intelligence is a totally different thing, and it would have the implications you say. These do not.

With that being said, yes a large part of the issue is that it isn’t original. It’s trained to create content that you’d expect from Carlin, so really what it’s doing is just repeating things. Just listen to the actual Carlin.

Another thing to consider is how this consolidates wealth. Who’s getting the money from this? It’s just a way to take other people’s creative works and capitalize on them without having to pay them. It’s purely exploitative as well as in bad taste.

fidodo , 5 months ago

The way I explain it in simplified terms; libraries helped us find books, search engines helped us find documents, LLMs help us find words. I expect LLMs to also provide a similar order of magnitude improvement in knowledge retrieval that we saw from those, which is a huge deal, but they are not on the path to AI consciousness.

That said, they may be an important processing component for assisting a consciousness, just like how in our brains we have different cortexes that primarily assist in processing information subconsciously.

Leg , 5 months ago

I don’t see this stand up as proper AI at all. However, I do see the writing on the wall, and we are definitely attempting to build towards what I referenced, a proper simulation of consciousness. So all the AI projects coming out now feel like stepping stones towards that end.

I thoroughly agree that this happening under a capitalist system is a recipe for shit though. However, we have no way of removing capital from the equation at this time, and like it or not, people are going to be doing more projects exactly like this. As well they will be making money from it because that is literally the only way anything ever gets done when capital is the beginning and end of the discussion. That’s more an issue with capitalism than AI personas IMO. This is how things are going to happen, and I feel like we’re better off trying to inject morality into the situation than to pretend that it won’t happen or that we can stop it from happening. Otherwise, what we’re doing is standing around with angry expressions on our faces, doing fuck all while corporation steal our likenesses for profit.

We have to tread carefully from here.

nandeEbisu , 5 months ago

From the perspective of his daughter who knew George Carlin personally, I can see how this would be disturbing. It’s as if someone strung up a dead relative like a puppet and put on a show.

I think in more abstract terms from someone who just saw his standup, it’s a fun novelty as long as they’re not profiting from it or misrepresenting it.

Sarmyth , 5 months ago

My thoughts exactly. It’s being represented as exactly what it is, but I don’t think the daughter raised by George Carlin would be happy about it.

It reminds me of the quote, “Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

Cethin , 5 months ago

That’s basically saying “she should be happy about plagerism.” Sure, they like Carlin, or at least think he’ll be profitable. That doesn’t mean accepting them ripping him off is the right thing.

Sarmyth , 5 months ago

It’s actually not saying that at all. I specifically said that I expected her to dislike it.

The rest of us, less emotionally invested in the person as a person and more as a deceased performer, will have differing opinions.

The creators of this and articles around it keep referring to it as an impression that speaks to their motives a little. This is why i used that common colloquialism. I suspect that the timing of this may be motivated by recent news surrounding the actors’ strikes.

Demonstrating how this could be used to convincingly create content from an actor without any of their intentional input (evident by him being dead) should make people question these capabilities more, just like they did when people first started seeing convincing deep fakes.

fidodo , 5 months ago

With impressionists you can clearly see that they’re huge fans paying homage to someone they respect. With AI it feels like lazily cashing in on someone’s death. You just swap out the name for another popular comedian and boom, more views and money. It’s the commoditization of culture, like the equivalent of replacing hand crafted wood furniture with flat pack particle board.

Leg , 5 months ago

Assuming we kill capitalism and form a more utopic society (which the Carlinbot amusingly is all for, but also cynically doesn’t think is possible), would AI recreations of existing or previously existing people still be an issue to you? I’m morbidly curious what an AI “me” would be like, and I can imagine others being against something like that coming to be.

fidodo , 5 months ago

To me, AI is a helpful reference and information transformation tool. I have no issue with the technology any more than I do with a word processor. It’s all about how it’s used so it’s 100% about context for me, and in this context, it’s clearly a cynical and lazy cash grab by a washed up tech bro comedian.

Lucidlethargy , 5 months ago

This is bullshit, and it’s bad for you.

Nusm , 5 months ago

Y’know, I was a pretty big Carlin fan, I had a few of his albums and even saw him live in concert once. I listened to the whole thing while driving, and I thought this was okay. It’s obviously not George Carlin, but it sounded a lot like him, and I can imagine he would approve of many of the jokes. It wasn’t a laugh-a-minute, but I did get lost in it a couple of times and forget that it wasn’t really him, and I did laugh out loud a few times as well. (The joke about the best comedian for AI being Bill Cosby got me!)

Carlin’s comedy was very topical, which doesn’t always translate to today, so having new, up-to-date Carlin bits are actually cool. I can understand his daughter’s apprehension, but at least people are talking about her dad again, so I would think that’s a good thing.

rob_t_firefly , 5 months ago

People never stopped talking about her dad. This junk isn’t the boost to the real Carlin’s place in pop culture some are painting it as.

Chakravanti , 5 months ago

Of course they can’t. But they can and will exploit every single word he’s ever said. Then exploit every idiot who gives said AI product and sense of their attention.

Gotta be a dick here though. If they listen to the honestly lying charade running now then they didn’t hear him when he explained the first time.

Lunatech , 5 months ago

@L4s I will not comment on the ethics of this, but I will say that if I had heard this without being told it's AI generated (and the do tell you, at the start and again at the end) and if I didn't know Carlin was dead, I would easily have believed it was him doing this bit. Now I was never a big Carlin fan (I pretty much only heard what could be played on the radio, and most of his stuff didn't fall into that category) so maybe someone more acquainted with his material would have noticed differences, but to me it was a scary good impression of him.

I have to wonder if the daughter doesn't like it because she realizes that she's (I assume) still getting some small amount of payment when people buy his older stuff, but as much of his material was topical I'm guessing those payments are ever diminishing, and she may fear that AI impressions of him will diminish the sales of his older stuff even further. Either that, or possibly it's unsettling to her that a machine could come that close to making a spot-on impression of her father. I guess if someone created an AI of my dad saying things that he never actually said when he was alive, I would also find it somewhat unsettling and maybe even a little creepy.

I'd also be interested to know exactly how much of the creativity behind this (the script) was created by the AI and how much work there was on the part of humans to make it sound natural. I get that AI can make the audio, that's pretty much a given now, but where did the script come from?

Mango , 5 months ago

I’m not here to rage about the whole human vs machine thing because I honestly don’t give two shits. However, this isn’t very good. The pacing feels like George Carlin, but that’s about it. It’s really more like an edgy Ryan Reynolds.

GuyDudeman , 5 months ago

I disagree. It’s actually pretty good. Hopefully some people will be outraged enough to actually listen to it.

The joke structure is 100% Carlin’s. The delivery is almost perfect. The message is spot-on.

Sekrayray , 5 months ago

Agree. It was fun to hear. The bit around 37 mins about what it’s like being dead was fun

Nusm , 5 months ago

The bit about AI Bill Cosby made me laugh the hardest. “You get all of the Cosby jokes with none of the Cosby rapes!”

MirthfulAlembic , 5 months ago

As someone who’s consumed every album and special George Carlin produced, it felt like someone retelling their memory of some of his bits. Like regurgitation. It’d be impressive if your nephew performed this at his thirteenth birthday party after becoming obsessed with Carlin.

Nusm , 5 months ago

See, I disagree. Someone retelling their memory of some of his bits, or your nephew performing at his birthday party would be telling old George Carlin jokes. This was new material and was topical, which I think is cool. It’s hard to know what George would really think about today’s climate, but I can’t imagine it would be too far off from the this.

Was it perfect? No. But if I know what it is going in, I can sit back and just enjoy it for what it is - entertainment.

kromem , 5 months ago

It’d be impressive if your nephew performed this at his thirteenth birthday party after becoming obsessed with Carlin.

Given modern generative large language models are still about a decade away from a thirteenth birthday, this is pretty impressive then.

Does anyone remember the Seinfeld AI generation in 2022?

Do we really think this tech is going to stop here and not improve at all after such rapid growth in the past two years?

By the time of its thirteenth birthday I suspect it’s going to have gotten much better at writing jokes.

Cethin , 5 months ago

it felt like someone retelling their memory of some of his bits. Like regurgitation.

That’s because that’s exactly what these are. They don’t create new things. They use and modify existing work.

stephen01king , 5 months ago

They being the writers of the joke, which are humans. The AI part is only imitating George Carlins voice and cadence.

Cethin , 5 months ago

Oh, well that changes a lot. I assumed it was AI generated jokes. The people writting the jokes should just tell it themselves. What’s the point of using Carlin’s likeness?

stephen01king , 5 months ago

Could be they are not good at telling jokes, or they wanted to use material that are more associated with George Carlin rather than them. I don’t know.

IMO, using AI voices is funnier when you make them say things the real person would never say, so I don’t see the appeal of imitating someone.

XEAL , 5 months ago

“No Machine Will Ever Replace His Genius”

OK, but it’s the closest that we can get at the moment.

GentlemanLoser , 5 months ago

Why do we need to get closer at all? He lived, gave us a ton of laughs that we can still enjoy, and died. Leave it at that.

XEAL , 5 months ago

Maybe some enjoy this new content, why gatekeeping?

yuriy , 5 months ago

Because it’s a hot button topic and all the smart people seem to echo this same sentiment.

FlyingSquid , 5 months ago

Maybe listen to one of the many, many other human topical comedians out there today instead?

toybastard , 5 months ago

“Gatekeeping”??? The man is dead. That’s not gatekeeping. People don’t need more “content”, and certainly aren’t entitled to it over his family’s wishes. There’s gotta be a moral floor somewhere.

Jordan117 , 5 months ago

I listened to it and it’s genuinely not bad (on a content and voice synthesis level), to the point that I have a hard time believing it was entirely AI-generated. If it’s not a fake ghostwritten by the creators, it must have been heavily rerolled and edited to make it so coherent.

UnderpantsWeevil , 5 months ago

I listened to it and it’s genuinely not bad

Of course not. Its predicated on the collected works of a decades-long professional comedian.

If you re-mixed a new screenplay using the combined works of Shakespeare (and called it, idk, West Side Story or 10 Things I Hate About You or The Lion King) you could put together a blockbuster movie fairly easily, too.

If it’s not a fake ghostwritten by the creators, it must have been heavily rerolled and edited to make it so coherent.

The rise of ‘pseudo-AI’: how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots’ work

CommanderCloon , 5 months ago

“Mechanical turk” jobs are way more hellish than any realistic AI dystopia, even though some AI developments use MTurks

Nollij , 5 months ago

Fully agree. There’s absolutely no way his whole bit about guns was generated from an LLM, while including the tangent about Japan. There had to have been a significant amount of leading prompts to get it to that point. At which point, whoever developed those prompts gets (at least partial) credit as a writer

Xeroxchasechase , 5 months ago

Senior Prompt Engineer

mhague , 5 months ago

Carlin’s entire schtick was anti-intellectual platitudinous. He reminds me of Trump with a sense of humor.

Donkter , 5 months ago

Which jokes of his are anti-intellectual?

mhague , 5 months ago

For starters, his famous “think of how dumb the average person is, half of people are dumber than that.”

Only a small percent of people would be perceptibly below average. Like single digits. It’s circlejerk humor.

And as far as humor goes, I think he’s great. Just not a genius nor a prophet.

MrPoopyButthole , 5 months ago

I don’t think he was trying to make literal statements with things like that. Yes, he used sociopolitical commentary as his medium, but he was still a comedian.

He’s not trying to convince his audience that everybody is stupid, he’s speaking to a feeling most of us have had when looking at what others are doing. Everyone sometimes feels like like everybody around them must be stupid, just like we all sometimes feel like we’re the only one missing something.

He’s beloved because most really talented comedians can derive humor from relatable or absurd situations and stories, but Carlin could make a rhythm linking broad abstract concepts of human experience to really specific examples.

He’s not a god, he was just a really talented comedian that had a unique style and medium.

Pretzilla , 5 months ago

On your last point I disagree - he was and is my personal savior

Donkter , 5 months ago

But how is that anti-intellectual? Maybe it’s literally saying most people aren’t intellects? But taking the literal interpretation of this joke misses the joke as the other guy pointed out.

mhague , 5 months ago

I’m not reading into it literally, that’s the point. On the surface, Carlin “tells it like it is.” He says things that the people agree with.

You know what? Just look at the praise for Carlin. You’ll see things like “genius” and “prophet” or “brilliant insight.”

Then look at people criticizing him like me. Suddenly people defend his character by pointing out he’s just a comedian, it’s just jokes, judge him as a comedian, it’s not serious, etc.

He’s the Trump of his domain.

Donkter , 5 months ago

You didn’t really answer the question…

GrundlButter , 5 months ago

deleted_by_author

Pretzilla , 5 months ago

It’s not though. But I like your take on it, except you butchered it lol

Or can you substantiate that claim with broader context? I can’t remember the setup to the premise.

I guess we could ask Carlinbot.

mhague , 5 months ago

In a scenario where the average IQ is 200? Do you understand what you’re talking about? You realize that the majority of people are exactly average, with a bit fuzziness, right? No? Then I guess Carlin is for you.

z3rOR0ne , 5 months ago

Fuck whoever did this. That podcaster… Wtf ever. I couldnt even finish reading the article. I am seething with rage at this so hard I’m shaking. I hope the creator of this abomination gets sued so badly, their great grandchildren curse their name because of the inherited debt.

Fucking asshole.

AlfredEinstein , 5 months ago

I listened to the first five minutes, and it’s pretty similar to Carlin’s later work.

I’m not clutching my pearls about this any more than Steamboat Willie going into the public domain.

Intellectual property rights are silly, and protecting dead entertainers’ legacies is a waste of time. If a Carlinbot makes a good joke, good for the Carlinbot. What I heard wasn’t very impressive.

burliman , 5 months ago

Don’t worry, pearls will be clutched anyway. Our society is hungry for outrage.

z3rOR0ne , 5 months ago

Those are two very different issues. Steamboat Willie belongs in the public domain as it’s copyright has long been expired. Disney has done some shady shit to keep control over their copywritten material for far too long. It’s good they backed down over that bullshit.

US Copyright law says their work only goes into the public domain 70 years after the creator’s death. Carlin passed away in 2008.I’m bad at math, but uhh…it hasn’t been 70 years yet… right? Or did we all go through a time warp again?

This is just yet another example as to why AI companies need to pay foe the data they collect. The artwork and written work displayed on the web still falls under copyright law and thusly the works can only be utilized with express consent from the creators. And yes, until it falls into the public domain.

Now, you could argue that 70 years is too long for copyright to expire. I am open to such an argument. But that simply isnt the case right now for Carlin’s work. Thusly, the creator of this ”work” should indeed be sued (rather brutally imo).

Lastly, even if all this was legal, it’s in incredibly poor taste to do this. It’s one thing for a comic to take inspiration from Carlin, but it would be in poor taste for that same comic to steal his work. This is in even poorer taste from what I see. What a fucking sack of shit this creator is. I hope he dies slowly from sepsis.

AlfredEinstein , 5 months ago

Nah, you’re wrong. Fuck protecting creators from AI. Let the internet become a circlejerk of bots gobbling each other’s digital cum.

When a good comedian comes along, I’ll go see a live performance. The same goes for musicians, painters, novelists, whoever. Anyone old enough to remember the internet of the '90s will tell you what a derivative shithole it has become already. It’s only getting worse. Artists will adapt and monetize things that AI can’t ruin the market for.

Analog human culture can be fun in ways that no chatbot will ever know.

z3rOR0ne , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

Yeah, based off your post history, I don’t value your opinion all that much. And I’m sure the feeling’s mutual.

But hey, you do you, troll.

AlfredEinstein , 5 months ago

Don’t get defensive about this.

AI will gobble up all intellectual property and shit out something similar. Over and over over.

Stopping it isn’t an option. And it isn’t society’s job to protect intellectual property owners from new technology in the first place.

Living creators will be able to make a humble living through live appearances and physical media, the same as they have for the last couple of centuries.

This isn’t about your ego, peanut. Your position is the wrong one.