George Carlin's family is suing the creators of that godawful George Carlin AI

The case from Carlin's family accuses the video of being "a poorly-executed facsimile cobbled together by unscrupulous individuals"

By William Hughes  |  January 26, 2024 | 6:17am
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George Carlin's family is suing the creators of that godawful George Carlin AI
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The family of George Carlin has launched a lawsuit against media company Dudesy this week, accusing the organization of committing “a casual theft of a great American artist’s work” by creating a generative AI project based on Carlin’s stand-up, and using it to produce an hour-long stand-up special that also imitated the late comedy legend’s voice. The Dudesy project was publicized a few weeks back, if by “publicized,” you mean, “everyone pointed out how horrifying this all was, and then tried to forget it ever happened, but this is the internet, and so.”

The lawsuit names 20 John Does, plus Chad Kultgen and former Mad TV star Will Sasso, the hosts of the Dudesy podcast, which they apparently create by “talking to” an AI model of the same name. (We sacrificed 10 minutes of our life to listening to the episode of the show where Sasso and Kultgen addressed the video, and can confirm that their attitude seems to be a mixture of defensiveness, trolling, and maybe a bit of genuine “We wanted to see what people would do in response to our ‘art’” philosophizing.)

Anyway: Launched by Carlin’s daughter, Kelly Carlin, the lawsuit accuses the creators of the special of copyright infringement, on the basis that they fed their AI Carlin’s material, and then asked it to create a copy of his work—making it one of the first such cases to be brought into the courts, with the family of a public figure suing AI users for trying to profit from (or at least get promotional heat from) copyrighted material.

Kelly Carlin also released a statement, raking pretty much all involved with this thing over the coals:

My father was a legendary comedian and a once-in-a-lifetime talent whose legacy is the body of work that he left behind — his actual performances, albums and books. I understand and share the desire for more George Carlin. I, too, want more time with my father. But it is ridiculous to proclaim he has been ‘resurrected’ with AI. The ‘George Carlin’ in that video is not the beautiful human who defined his generation and raised me with love. It is a poorly-executed facsimile cobbled together by unscrupulous individuals to capitalize on the extraordinary goodwill my father established with his adoring fanbase.

[via Variety]

 
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