George Carlin Estate Files Lawsuit Against Group Behind AI-Generated Stand-Up Special: ‘A Casual Theft of a Great American Artist’s Work’

If its wrong to use AI to put genitals in someone's mouth it should probably be wrong to use AI to put words in their mouth as well.

Damn.
snaps
I agree and I get it's a funny way to put it, but in this case they started the video with a massive disclaimer that they were not Carlin and that it was AI. So it's hard to argue they were putting things in his mouth. If anything it's praiseworthy of a standard when it comes to disclosing if AI was involved, considering the hate mob revealing that attracts.
- The internet doesn’t care though. If I make fake pictures of people using their likeness and add a disclaimer, people will just repost it without the disclaimer and it will still do damage. Now whether or not we can or should stop them is another story

This case is not just about AI, it’s about the humans that use AI to violate the law, infringe on intellectual property rights and flout common decency.”

Well put.

Eh…. I don’t know that I can agree with this.
I understand the intent behind it, but this specific instance is legitimately in parallel with impersonators, or satire. Hear me out.
They are impersonating his voice, using new content in his style, and make no claim to be legitimate.
So this comes down to “this is in bad taste” which, while I can understand and might even agree with… isn’t illegal.
The only novel concept in this, is that “scary tech” was used. There was no fraud, there was no IP violation, and no defamation. Where is the legal standing?
- They didn't write satire in his style, they sampled his actual work with a machine. It's not a parody of George Carlin, it's an inferior approximation of him.
- They trained the AI on his material. That's theft of IP without a license or agreement.
- I teared up listening to this special. It was like he was still alive. A lot of good material and definitely in his spirit. People who want to lock up our culture behind paywalls can get bent.
"That use AI to violate the law"
Watch out impressionists. If you get too good you might become a lawbreaker. The AI hysteria is beyond absurd.
- AI hysteria
  This is the concise way of putting it that I've been missing.
  Using AI to do something that actually intelligent beings already legally do, like impressions and parody (with disclaimers and all that), isn't suddenly theft or stealing because AI was used in the process. I'm really disappointed in the Lemmy community for buying into all this bs
- Impressionists have nothing to do with this.
  If I scraped all Beyonce's videos, cut it up and join it into another video, and called it "Beyonce: resurrected", I'm not doing am impression. I'm stealing someone's work and likeness for commercial purposes.
  Are you sad that your garbage generator is just a plagiarism machine?

I'm torn. I can see why they would be upset. And they may have a case with likeness rights.

But at the same time, this specific example isn't trying to claim any kind of authenticity. It goes out of its way to explain that it's not George. It seems clearly to be along the lines of satire. No different than an impersonator in a SNL type sketch.

I guess I don't have any real problem with clearly fake AI versions of things. My only real problem would be with actual fraud. Like the AI Biden making calls trying to convince people not to vote in a primary. That's clearly criminal fraud, and an actual problem.

My only real problem would be with actual fraud. Like the AI Biden making calls trying to convince people not to vote in a primary.
That's the difference between impression and impersonation. My disappointment in the Lemmy community for not understanding the difference is immeasurable. We're supposed to be better than this but really we're no better than Reddit, running with ragebait headlines for the cheap dopamine hit that is the big upvote number.
If it were a human doing a Carlin impression, literally NOBODY would give a fuck about this video.

Ive been thinking about this a lot and if you think about this like they are selling a stolen product then it can be framed differently.

Say I take several MegaMan games, take a copy of all the assets, recombine them into a new MegaMan game called "Unreal Tales of MegaMan". The game has whole new levels inspired by capcom's Megaman. Many would argue that the work is transformative.

Am I allowed to sell that MegaMan game? I'm not a legal expert but I think the answer to that would generally be no. My intention here is to mimic a property and profit off of a brand I do not own the rights too.

Generative AI uses samples of original content to create the derivative work to synthesize voices of actors. The creator of this special intention is to make content from a brand that they can solely profit from.

If you used an AI to generate a voice like George Carlin to voice the Reptilian Pope in your videogame, I think you would have a different problem here. I think it's because they synthesized the voice and then called it George Carlin and sold it as a "New Comedy Special" it begins to fall into the category of Bootleg.

You couldn't sell that game, even if you created your own assets, because Mega Man is a trademarked character. You could make a game inspired by Mega Man, but if you use any characters or locations from Mega Man, you would be violating their trademark.
AI, celebrity likeness, and trademark is all new territory, and the courts are still sorting out how corporations are allowed to use a celebrities voices and faces without their consent. Last year, Tom Hanks sued a company that used an IA generated version of him for an ad, but I think it's still in court. How the courts rule on cases like this will probably determine how you can use AI generated voices like in your Reptilian Pope example (though in that case, I'd be more worried about a lawsuit from Futurama).
This lawsuit is a little different though; they're sidestepping the issue of likeness and claiming that AI is stealing from Carlin's works themselves, which are under copyright. It's more similar to the class action lawsuit against Chat GPT, where authors are suing because the chatbot was fed their works to create derivative works without their consent. That case also hasn't been resolved yet.
Edit: Sorry, I also realized I explained trademark and copyright very poorly. You can't make a Mega Man game because Mega Man, as a name, is trademarked. You could make a game that has nothing to do with the Mega Man franchise, but if you called it Mega Man you would violate the trademark. The contents of the game (levels, music, and characters) are under copyright. If you used the designs of any of those characters but changed the names, that would violate copyright.
- Celebrity likeness is not new territory.
  Crispin Glover successfully sued the filmmakers of Back to the Future 2 for using his likeness without permission. Even with dead celebrities, you need permission from their estate in order to use their likeness.
I think it’s because they synthesized the voice and then called it George Carlin and sold it as a “New Comedy Special” it begins to fall into the category of Bootleg.
Except this is untrue. They were very open that this wasn't Carlin, but an ai learning from him and mimicking his style.
The better comparison is that to an Elvis impersonator who sings song they themselves wrote explicitly in the style of Elvis and try to sound like him.
I think ai changes the game and we need to rethink the laws, but I don't see this case lasting long in court, unless there is some law I don't know about.
- They also weren’t selling it as far as I know. They put the whole thing on YouTube and prefaced with this is an AI trying to recreate a Carlin stand up set.

It's worth pointing out here that this script was probably written by a human.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/01/did-an-ai-write-that-hour-long-george-carlin-special-im-not-convinced/

Edit: reporting now indicates that it was human written https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/01/george-carlins-heirs-sue-comedy-podcast-over-ai-generated-impression/

I'll take Lawyers Maximizing Billable Hours for $500, Alex

It's kind of like suspension of disbelief. Comes from pro wrestling. It's a lot like pretending Santa is real when you're 13 and know it's not.
She's a friend.

What's the alleged crime? Comedy impersonation isn't illegal. And the special had numerous disclaimers that it was an impersonation of Carlin.

Sounds like a money grab by the estate, which Carlin himself probably would have railed on.

Where's the line? Were they parodying Carlin? Or just using his likeness? Can Fox News do this with Biden?
This is a far larger thing than just a comedy impersonation.
- It's something the law isn't equipped to handle as written.
- Whether it's presented as real seems a reasonable line to me.
  Fox News could not use it to mislead people into thinking Biden said something that he did not, but parody like "Sassy Justice" from the South Park creators (using a Trump deepfake) would still be fine.
- If you watch the video it's very clear from the beginning that it's a fake voice and they used AI to write the jokes. It says flat out it's not George Carlin. There is no way anyone could be mistaken. Also it only kind of sounds like him.
- Donald Trump, while president, was impersonated by thousands of people as comedy acts. Some people even had full time gigs doing it!
  It's not a illegal when you are doing it for comedy. Pretending to actually be someone who you are not, is fraud, but that's not what we're talking about.
  Mimicking someone's voice or putting on a costume in their likenesses doesn't make it illegal.
  If it did, then Elvis impersonator festivals would be a mass crime gathering!
What do you mean by "comedy impersonation" - parody, or just copying a comedian?
If I were to set up a music show with a Madonna impersonator and slightly changed Madonna songs (or songs in her style), I'll get my pants sued off.
If Al Yankovic does a parody of a Madonna song, he's in the clear (He does ask for permission, but that's a courtesy and isn't legally mandatory).
The legal term is "transformative use". Parody, like where SNL has Alec Baldwin impersonating Trump, is a recognized type of transformative use. Baldwin doesn't straight up impersonate Trump, he does so in a comedic fashion (The impersonation itself is funny, regardless of how funny Trump is). The same logic applied when parodying or impersonating a comedian.
- If I were to set up a music show with a Madonna impersonator and slightly changed Madonna songs (or songs in her style), I'll get my pants sued off.
  Drag shows do stuff like this all the time with zero issue. Artistic freedom is a thing.
- I think your Madonna example is completely fine as long as they don't call themselves Madonna and start uploading videos on YouTube with her name on it (like is the case here).
  Madonna owns her name and trademark but not her tone of voice, style of songs or her wardrobe choices.
  In the same way, The George Carlin estate doesn't own his speech mannerism or comedic style but they certainly own his name.
- How is the AI impersonation of Carlin different from when Paramount used actors who looked like Queen Elizabeth or Barbara Bush, or human impersonators who sound just like the real person they’re impersonating (besides the obvious difference)?
  I’m not saying Dudesy is in the right. Making an AI system sound like someone somehow feels different than an impersonator doing the same thing. But I don’t know why I feel that way, as they’re extremely similar cases.
- If I were to set up a music show with a Madonna impersonator and slightly changed Madonna songs (or songs in her style), I'll get my pants sued off.
  Wait, so America's Got Talent aired a crime with this Elvis impersonator?
  Granted, the AI Carlin made it clear that he was NOT the real Carlin, but this Elvis is trying to be Elvis. 🤷‍♂️
Obscenity.
Publically exhibiting a disgusting object,
- Oh like that law they are trying to pass in Texas now that outlaws porn?

Internet: this is awful, of course your inheritors own your own image as stewarts.

Also Internet: I have a right to take pictures of you, your car, your house, or record you without consent. Edit it however I want. Make as much money as I want from the activities and you have no rights. Since if technology allows me to do something you have no expectation that I won't.

We are demanding that a public figure who is dead have more rights than a private person who is alive.

Im probably out of the loop, or just way too tired to work out what you mean.
Who is the "also internet" part roughly referring to? It reminded me of the sssniperwolf incident, and if i recall, the internet was not happy with that, so it doesn't make sense to me.
Im also not comfortable with the generalised use of "the internet" because by its very nature saying "the internet" is almost akin to saying "humans"
Every individual member of "the internet" is different and has different views, so pointing out a discrepancy and framing it like it shouldn't be there is a bit redundant.
Its like saying
Humans: like affordable housing
Also humans: raise interest rates to unaffordable levels.
There are two different groups here that are both humans. So its not particularly useful to group them together with the collective word when trying to point out a disparity.
- Just many many times over the years I have seen little pervs on social media brag how they are citizen journalists and have every right to publish any photo that they could physically take. Since no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in their own home.

It's nothing like Carlin.

It's theft of his work.

Pick one.

I read it like:
Mimic, pace of tone and body language are parts of the work.
That they don't hit the main part (I.e the humor) is just the icing.
Perhaps I'm top lenient though.
- The problem with that is that you can’t protect “pace of tone” and “body language” under law.
- Would you say Palworld is copyright infringement?
But that would mean having principles instead of profiting off AI hysteria.
- It's hilarious that I'm getting downvoted. 🤣

Ripped it from YouTube last night to add to my media server; curiously it's no longer available on youtube this morning... (at least the original Dudesy upload I'd grabbed, there's re-uploads)

I refuse to watch it - I love the original guys stuff so it wouldn't feel right.
However, is it any good?
- Just finished it:
  It's an interesting piece. I'm not sure I'd pay to watch it or any other AI comedy specials (didn't even watch it via YouTube to avoid ad revenue), but given free access I wanted to at least see what's up.
  It both starts and ends with very clear disclaimers that this is not George Carlin but an AI impersonation of him. The voice is pretty close, but not quite right, though it matches his cadence quite well. Even without the disclaimers, it's pretty obvious to me it's not actually George Carlin.
  The majority of the video is clearly AI generated art to match the current topic, mostly stills with a handful of short sections of AI people mouthing the words. I'm fairly sure the script and art were curated by a human, along with the overall editing of the special.
  Quite a bit of highly political comedy in a very similar style to Carlin, but definitely doesn't hold a candle to his original/genuine work. It also discusses what he/it is, some of the controversy around it's existence, and the possible future of AI use throughout all professions, but mainly standup comedy roles and similar (like talk show hosts and news anchors for example)
  Worth a watch, if you can keep an open mind and recognize there's a difference between the original and an artistic representation of him. I don't think the tools used changes that, especially with it clearly stated as being an impersonation.
- It doesn't compare with any of George Carlin's performances, but as it is I liked it, it's quite ammusing. It's hard to imagine an ai came up with all the text and topics by itself, I'm convinced there's at least human editing there.
Ah... How can I get that file, I haven't seen it.
- It's called 'George Carlin: I'm glad that I'm dead'. Have a look around, the original upload was removed, but there are others.

Good. I sincerely hope they win.

I'd have sympathy if this was about a grieving family wanting to be left alone, but it looks more like the "estate" wanting money. At least they aren't going after total nobodies. (Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen)

I've watched it on YouTube, it's pretty good. It starts "this is an impersonation of George Carlin". Wonder if a court ruling would prevent human impersonation.

Why sue? I got through 2 minutes.. And the voice was not even close to George Carlin.. Like it doesn't get down his rasp, and sounds like 70s George Carlin

For the same reason that, for example, Kevin Hart would sue someone for releasing an "AI Kevin Hart" album that was a poor imitation of his comedy. It's appropriating his name and his artistry for publicity. Did the album itself make money? No, because they didn't charge for it. Did they make a shitload of publicity- thus generating money- for their podcast? You bet they did.

I agree it’s fucked up, but damn if it isn’t well done and pretty spot on. It’s crazy to hear about recent events from the voice and perspective of George Carlin. The special had me ready to pick up my pitchfork.

I watched the whole thing and it was obviously written by someone and dropped through a text to speech engine (or "AI").
- I do not believe for a second that this was written by AI. AI is getting a lot better at writing, but it still sucks when it comes to humour. It's great at going from A to B with a typical flow of thought, but it tends to struggle with the reverse, B to A, like a punchline and its setup. Since the court case seems to revolve around not the impersonation aspect but instead the supposed training of the AI on Carlin's works, it'll be interesting to find the truth in the matter.

George Carlin was all about lawsuits and money, great way to honor him. /S

Good. Can't wait for Nintendo to sue Palworld, too. All this AI garbage needs to be put in it's place.

I think AI will win this fight. We're equiped with buckets to fight a tsunami.

AI of today is the worst it will ever be and it's already pretty fucking good. I expect that in the next 5 to 20 years most if not all the best content will be AI generated and I'm excited for it. I feel for the artists that will suffer because of it but I can't see how we're going to stop it or why we even should.

The current trajectory of AI produced media is pointing toward personalized content. Every viewer would have their own exclusive shows and movies. This sounds great on the surface, but is actually mostly terrible.
Media today brings people together, by watching movies together or discussing the latest episode of a new series. With personalized content, not only will none of your friends have seen the show you're watching, but they won't even be able to see it; it lives only in your account on some proprietary streaming service and might even have been generated on-the-fly, never to be seen again.
Additionally, you can be certain that any company producing AI-generated content will put their own biases into it as much as possible. When streaming services push out competition in favor of in-house generated content, viewers will only have access to content skewed one way, further polarizing people based on which service they watch. With personalized content, those biases become much harder to scrutinize, because no two people can watch the same piece of content to compare opinions or analysis.
Finally, if you step back and consider the purpose of watching video content, it's mostly for entertainment. A moderate amount of varied entertainment can be healthy to unwind or pass the time, but an infinite source of "perfect" content encourages unhealthy media habits like binge-watching, and is unlikely to challenge the viewer's beliefs or support their mental health. Distress drives engagement, as social media has proven.
Once studios can produce fully AI generated movies, personalized media won't be far behind. Cheap AI generated personalized media is coming. If it takes hold, it'll push us all further apart.
I hope none of these predictions come to pass, but we'll see whether good intentions win over money this time.

I'm all for comedy that upsets people

So you're a big fan of Roseanne?

A person's voice cannot be copywrited. I hope these people get countersued to oblivion.

It's 'copyrighted.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
- Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
  Midler v. Ford Motor Co. , 849 F. 2d 460 (9th Cir. 1988) is a United States Court of Appeals case in which Bette Midler sought remedy against Ford Motor Company for a series of commercials in the 1980s which used a Midler impersonator.
  ^to ^opt ^out^, ^pm ^me ^'optout'. ^article ^| ^about

‘A Casual Theft of a Great American Artist’s Work’

Except.... maybe not?

Dudesy started an "AI podcast" as in a podcast "generated by AI" back when GPT-3 was just coming out. Their first episode included an extensive discussion of kayfabe. In other words, an elaborate hoax, using more traditional voice-masking tools, to record a human-written (perhaps AI-assisted?), human-voice, speaking the lines and having Carlin's voice replace the original voice speaking.

Long article, but worth the read. Certainly seems like kayfabe to me.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/01/did-an-ai-write-that-hour-long-george-carlin-special-im-not-convinced/

It’s also worth remembering the context around AI at the time Dudesy premiered in March 2022. The “state of the art” public AI at the time was the text-davinci-002 version of GPT-3, an impressive-for-its-day model that nonetheless still utterly failed at many simple tasks. It wouldn’t be until months later that a model update gave GPT-3 now-basic capabilities like generating rhyming poetry.

When Dudesy launched, we were still about eight months away from the public launch of ChatGPT revolutionizing the public understanding of large language models. We were also still three months away from Google’s Blake Lemoine making headlines for his belief that Google’s private LaMDA AI model was “sentient.”

The strongest evidence that the Dudesy AI is just a bit, though, comes later in that first episode. It starts with a lengthy discussion of kayfabe, a popular professional wrestling term that Sasso extends to include any form of entertainment that is “essentially holding up the conceit that it is real… if you're watching a movie, the characters don't just turn to you and say, ‘Hi, my name is Tom Cruise’… he's an actor.”

Kultgen links the kayfabe concept to one of his favorite reality shows, saying, “For The Bachelor, most of that audience believes it's real. Almost none of the WWE audience believes it's actually real.”

That’s when Sasso all but gives up the game, as far as Dudesy is concerned. “Of course nobody believes [the WWE] is real,” he says. “It's not about it being real. It's sort of a... you know, they say it's like a burlesque for guys. And that's what Dudesy is, a burlesque for guys.”

When I first approached Willison with the question of whether a current AI could write the Dudesy-Carlin special, he said he’d “expect GPT-4 to be able to imitate [Carlin’s] style pretty effectively… due to the amount of training data out there.” Indeed, if you ask ChatGPT-4 for some Carlin-esque material, you’ll get a few decent short-form observations, though none of the vulgarity and little of the insight that characterizes a true Carlin bit.

After watching a bit more of the special, though, Willison said he grew skeptical that GPT-4 or any current AI model was up to the task of creating the kinds of jokes on offer here. “I've poked around with GPT-4 for jokes a bunch, and my experience is that it's useless at classic setup/punchline stuff,” he said.

Willison pointed specifically to a Dudesy-Carlin bit about the potential for an AI-generated Bill Cosby (“With AI Bill Cosby, you get all of the Cosby jokes with none of the Cosby rapes”). Willison said he’s “never managed to get GPT-4 (still the best available model) to produce jokes with that kind of structure… when I try to get jokes out of it, I get something with a passable punchline about one out of ten times.”

While Willison said that Dudesy’s Carlin-esque voice imitation was well within the capabilities of current technology, the idea that an AI wrote the special was implausible. “Either they have genuinely trained a custom model that can generate jokes better than any model produced by any other AI researcher in the world... or they're still doing the same bit they started back in 2022,” he said.

That's a really long article to basically say that the Carlin AI stand-up was probably mostly if not entirely written by a human--but to sound like an AI. It's an impression of AI by a lousy comic (or a couple of em working together) and they decided to shit on the legacy of one of our greatest comic minds in the process. If that's the joke, i can see why nobody is laughing.
There's obviously a lot of legal grey-areas here though, so if any good comes from this it will hopefully be in the form of laws to prevent stupid shit like this flooding the Internet.

I don't think individuals should own their tone of voice or style. I've seen the copyright abuse on YouTube and it would end up with videos being taken down the moment you utter a word with a tone of voice that sounds mildly like a celebrity.

I do believe they should own their name though. Getting sued because you try to pass yourself off as someone else is completely justifiable. This video is coasting off his name, it isn't exactly right.

It’s not trying to pass itself off as Carlin though. It clearly says at the beginning that it is NOT him, that it’s an AI’s impression of him.
This would open up any comedian who does an impression of anyone else to a lawsuit. The only difference is that this is AI doing it instead of a person.
- I would agree with you if they hadn't named their video "George Carlin - I'm glad I'm dead". This is the equivalent of a Taylor Swift band putting out original work and naming their upload "Taylor Swift - my new song".
  I shouldn't have to wonder if the video I'm clicking is by the original artist or an AI/Impersonator. It should be clear without a doubt.
  There is a line and it's pretty generous but I think they crossed it, most likely purposely as to drum up controversy and make a quick buck. It's a shame because this kind of irresponsibility is only going to cause problems.
- But…impressions are covered because it’s obvious to most everyone that the person impersonating is not the original subject. It’s clearly another person making a point with a reasonable facsimile of the other person.
  But when you start veering into taking someone’s likeness and making it say things the subject never chose to say…it’s entirely different. The point of the AI is to get as realistic as possible.
  I don’t think giving a disclaimer even matters here. The law isn’t adapted to a time where this was even possible, so the law is obviously lacking now, but I’m sure depending on your jurisdiction, the law for not using likeness as in photos/videos/voice in commercials still applies. It’s only more egregious because you’re not pulling from words they’ve said, but literally putting words in the persons mouth. It’s just wrong.

And they deserve to lose the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds. Full stop.

Anyone that actually knows the story behind it from a context beyond the anti-AI circlejerking narratives knows it was a form of comedic parody put together by comedians.

- I love the confidently incorrect.
  What is California’s right of publicity law?
  The right of publicity forbids the unauthorized use of an individual’s name or likeness for commercial or other certain exploitative purchases. [...]
  Any right of publicity is subject to First Amendment defenses. A defense team may claim if the alleged violation “contains significant transformative elements, it is not only especially worthy of First Amendment protection, but it is also less likely to interfere with the economic interest protected by the right of publicity.”
But Anti-AI circlejerking is the only thing Lemmy knows how to do!

As long as it's presented honestly, I don't have a problem with this. It's really no different from:

https://youtu.be/bc5xEgoAaM0

Or:

https://youtu.be/mLeXQtsohSI

Or:

https://youtu.be/7w0JrqI7RxE

A (at most) 20 second parodic imitation in a short cartoon is no different from a whole hour-long stand-up special automatically generated using a life's worth of actual stand-up material?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/bc5xEgoAaM0
https://piped.video/mLeXQtsohSI
https://piped.video/7w0JrqI7RxE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.