AI-Generated George Carlin Drops Comedy Special That Daughter Speaks Out Against: ‘No Machine Will Ever Replace His Genius’::Stand-up comedian George Carlin has been brought back to life in an artificial intelligence-generated special called ‘I’m Glad I’m Dead.’

  • Nusm
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    171 year 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
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      181 year 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.

  • @[email protected]
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    201 year 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.

  • Magical Thinker
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    121 year ago

    This is hilarious; everyone saying Carlin would hate this is essentially putting words in his mouth just like Dudesy did, but Dudesy put a lot more effort in.

    • @[email protected]
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      131 year ago

      No, they’re just extrapolating what someone’s feeling on something might be. That’s pretty different than creating an entire comedy special using the voice of a dead guy.

        • @[email protected]
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          71 year ago

          Nobody knows, but he’d probably hate it. I certainly wouldn’t want to put any words in his mouth, then use a computer program to imitate his voice so it seemed as if he were saying those words.

          • Magical Thinker
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            51 year ago

            I feel like as an anti capitalist (on the outside) nihilist anarchist insane fuck the world comedian, who is dead, he can’t care. If his daughter can’t sue then this is a circle jerk. When I die what my arrangements take care of is as much as I can control, after that who gives a fuck. I personally think he’d laugh his ass off.

  • @[email protected]
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    61 year 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
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    21 year ago
    • fightin’
    • cryin’
    • fuckin’
    • dyin’
  • @[email protected]
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    71 year ago

    “No Machine Will Ever Replace His Genius”

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

    • @[email protected]
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      121 year 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.

        • Flying Squid
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          51 year ago

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

        • @[email protected]
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          61 year 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.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

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

  • @[email protected]
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    151 year 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.

    • @[email protected]
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      211 year 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

      • @[email protected]
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        31 year ago

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

    • @[email protected]
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      71 year 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

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

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

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year 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.

          • @[email protected]
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            1 year 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.

          • @[email protected]
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            1 year 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.

        • @[email protected]
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          31 year 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.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 year 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.

        • Mr PoopyButthole
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          51 year 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.