George Carlin Estate Files Lawsuit Against Group Behind AI-Generated Stand-Up Special: ‘A Casual Theft of a Great American Artist’s Work’::George Carlin’s estate has filed a lawsuit against the creators behind an AI-generated comedy special featuring a recreation of the comedian’s voice.
It’s nothing like Carlin.
It’s theft of his work.
Pick one.
But that would mean having principles instead of profiting off AI hysteria.
It’s hilarious that I’m getting downvoted. 🤣
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.
Would you say Palworld is copyright infringement?
I’m just saying that I see that those two statements can exists at the same time without a huge mental leap - not that I agree with it - I apologize if I didn’t make that clear enough in the first post!
Do you think a style is IP?
The problem with that is that you can’t protect “pace of tone” and “body language” under law.
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.
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.
I’ll take Lawyers Maximizing Billable Hours for $500, Alex
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.
But Anti-AI circlejerking is the only thing Lemmy knows how to do!
First amendment’s got nothing to do with this my man.
The very often misunderstood first amendment only protects citizen’s speech from criminal charges by the government. Perhaps you meant the fair use doctrine?
I love the confidently incorrect.
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.”
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She’s a friend.
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.
Good. I sincerely hope they win.
It’s worth pointing out here that this script was probably written by a human.
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/
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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.
Before I watched it, I thought that it was perhaps sections written by AI and then stitched together afterwards.
After watching it, I think very little of it was actually written by AI, anything that “AI” contributed was thoroughly edited, and that most of it was completely written by a mediocre comedy writer.
There is a 0% chance that anyone typed anything like “Have AI George Carlin perform an hour-long special posthumously” into a computer and it spat that audio out.
There is exactly one bit that I think was even conceivably inspired by interactions with a chat bot and it’s the one about replacing the vowels in people’s names (which is coincidentally what a couple of YouTubers take as “proof” that it was AI generated in whole), and even that bit was likely AI-inspired but not at all AI-written.
EDIT: I wanted to add somewhere that I’m happy to find another skeptic. This seems like a modern “mechanical Turk” to me.
A thing that wouldn’t surprise me at all is if this is some sort of elaborate stunt similar to something Andy Kaufman would do.
It’s a ruse to drive publicity and generate revenue for a podcast. The album itself is free, but this was all about making money.
I’m all for comedy that upsets people
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There’s something hilarious about the two of you calling the other person a stick in the mud while you each have downvoted the other’s comments. I don’t know why, but it’s funny
So you’re a big fan of Roseanne?
As long as it’s presented honestly, I don’t have a problem with this. It’s really no different from:
Or:
Or:
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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?
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.
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
Completely true. But we cannot reasonably push the responsibility of the entire internet onto someone when they did their due diligence.
Like, some people post CoD footage to youtube because it looks cool, and someone else either mistakes or malicious takes that and recontextualizes it to being combat footage from active warzones to shock people. Then people start reposting that footage with a fake explanation text on top of it, furthering the misinformation cycle. Do we now blame the people sharing their CoD footage for what other people did with it? Misinformation and propaganda are something society must work together on to combat.
If it really matters, people would be out there warning people that the pictures being posted are fake. In fact, even before AI that’s what happened after tragedy happens. People would post images claiming to be of what happened, only to later be confirmed as being from some other tragedy. Or how some video games have fake leaks because someone rebranded fanmade content as a leak.
Eventually it becomes common knowledge or easy to prove as being fake. Take this picture for instance:
It’s been well documented that the bottom image is fake, and as such anyone can now find out what was covered up. It’s up to society to speak up when the damage is too great.
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)
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