Someday we’ll transfer previous the purpose the place you’ll be able to spend half an hour pumping out an AI video and generate headlines. Sadly, we’re not there but. The newest piece of refuse from the AI hype machine comes within the type of an unauthorized, “AI-generated” George Carlin comedy particular—one which virtually nobody, not even individuals concerned with it, appears to love. It was apparently made with out permission from the late comic’s household or any semblance of excellent style, however right here’s the perfect half: it’s not even clear how a lot of the particular was really created with AI within the first place.
Welcome again to the Dumbest Tech News of the Week, Gizmodo’s Monday column the place we dive into the perfect of the worst that expertise has to supply. This week we’re exploring Dudesy, an AI comedy podcast and video channel run by comic Will Sasso, author Chad Kultgen, and a tech firm they refuse to call. On Tuesday, Dudesy launched the particular, “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead.” Even Sasso and Kultgen appear uncomfortable with the undertaking, and that’s to say nothing of the numerous dangerous opinions and outrage from Carlin’s household. In different phrases: it’s dumb.
“It’s ghoulish,” stated Carlin’s daughter Kelly Carlin in an interview with Gizmodo. “Dead people don’t get to have a vote, and that’s what’s particularly disturbing to me about this. They’re voting for him. They’re deciding that this is ok to do and it’s a disrespect to his autonomy. It’s a violation of his humanity and his personhood, and, of course, his creative integrity. Ethically, it’s the stinkiest move I could imagine.”
The particular opens with an AI-generated voice describing the work it did to create the particular, as if the robotic did the work itself.
“My name is Dudesy, and I’m a comedy AI,” the voice says. “What you’re about to hear is not George Carlin. It’s my impersonation of George Carlin that I developed in the exact same way a human impressionist would. I listened to all of George Carlin’s material and did my best to imitate his voice, cadence, and attitude, as well as the subject matter I think would have interested him today.”
It then launches into an hour-long simulacrum of standup comedy wherein a voice that sounds quite a bit like George Carlin, who died in 2008, entertains a faux viewers.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to come out with new material, but I do have a pretty good excuse…” AI Carlin says, pausing for dramatic impact. “I was dead!” The crudely generated sounds of a man-made viewers roar in laughter and applause.
Some commenters appear charmed by the standup particular, however calling the opinions “mixed” could be beneficiant. Dozens of journalists fired up Google Docs to take low-cost photographs on the AI Carlin (are you able to picture one thing so debased) however the loudest response got here from the standup legend’s daughter. Kelly Carlin stated Dudesy by no means contacted her or her father’s property and advised Gizmodo she’s contemplating authorized motion.
“He really hated people putting words in his mouth,” Kelly Carlin stated. “This thing is the most egregious possible version of that.”
Back in 1999, a type of early textual content meme falsely attributed to George Carlin went viral over forwarded e mail messages. The maudlin essay, titled “The Paradox of Our Time in History,” bothered the comic a lot he stored an announcement explaining that he didn’t write it on the entrance web page of his web site:
“Most of this ‘humor’ on the Internet is just plain stupid,” George Carlin wrote. “I guess hard-core fans who follow my stuff closely would be able to spot the fake stuff because the tone of voice is so different. But a casual fan has no way of knowing, and it bothers me that some people might believe I’d actually be capable of writing some of this stuff.”
You would possibly suppose Dudesy’s human companions would stand by its work, however Sasso and Kultgen began distancing themselves from AI Carlin earlier than it was even launched.
“I personally don’t want to hear a fucking Nirvana song that’s not written by Kurt Cobain and played by fucking Nirvana. It’s not real and it doesn’t matter. Anyone can do an impression,” Sasso stated on episode 87 of the Dudesy podcast (obtainable in each video and audio). “Dudesy has consumed every George Carlin special and has pulled off something miraculous, but it’s not, by definition, new. It’s taken from a bunch of other shit.”
Sasso and Kultgen collaborate on the Dudesy undertaking with an unnamed tech firm; the pair say a non-disclosure settlement prevents them from revealing the group’s identify. If you are taking the podcast at face worth, the corporate makes Dudesy’s work independently and presents it to the hosts with out letting them know what’s in retailer. On the podcast episode introducing AI Carlin, Sasso and Kultgen appear to be listening to concerning the particular for the primary time.
“Oh man,” Sasso stated, taking his head in his arms as Dudsey defined the Carlin undertaking. “I don’t know what any of this means.”
Sasso and Kultgen have fun Dudesy, which they speak to as if it’s alive. But the 2 are visibly uncomfortable concerning the Carlin undertaking and argue about whether or not the general public will welcome the rising flood of AI artwork.
“What about the next step? Is Dudesy going to do its own hour of standup?” Kultgen requested. “What about a fully AI standup comedian?”
“Nobody gives a fuck about that,” Sasso stated.
There’s no video to go together with the AI Carlin particular. You can watch it on YouTube, but it surely’s simply the pretend Carlin’s voice talking over a slideshow of hastily-generated AI artwork. And whereas the audio clearly appears generated by an algorithm, the content material itself raises questions.
Dudesy suggests, in obscure phrases, that AI instruments made the particular from prime to backside. Presumably, the pretend phrases our hallucinated Carlin speaks have been generated with one thing like ChatGPT. But whereas large-language fashions can produce extremely convincing textual content, the entire thing feels a little bit too polished. The script doesn’t have the hallmarks of AI authorship; it appears a little bit too good to be true. Because the corporate behind Dudesy is a few sort of bizarre secret, it’s laborious to say for certain.
We reached out to Sasso and Kultgen’s representatives to ask simply how a lot human intervention went into “I’m Glad I’m Dead.” They didn’t reply.
In the particular, the pretend Carlin rails in opposition to conservatives, delves into the finer factors of gun management, trans rights, and Elon Musk, and, predictably, discusses the way forward for synthetic intelligence. It sounds quite a bit just like the sorts of issues Carlin would possibly say if he have been alive and on stage in 2024. Carlin’s presumably simulated voice tells us it’s the primary comic to be introduced again from the useless, but it surely actually received’t be the final. It goes on to counsel that AI is the way forward for standup and, in true Carlin kind, says we shouldn’t be so treasured about the entire thing. That’s a debate value having, however one factor’s for certain: this Carlin particular isn’t very humorous.
“If I can’t be precious about his individual existence then I don’t know what we’re gonna do as a species,” Kelly Carlin stated. “Of course, people get overly precious about art and things like that, but George Carlin did not write or perform this thing, so take his name off of it. It can be ‘inspired by,’ or ‘an homage to,’ or ‘Carlin-esque,’ or ‘in the style of.’ Call it something else, and then I dont give a shit. Standup is a lived human experience. Sure, a lot of people watch it on TV, but the standup comic has to leave their house and go to a theater to do the work, and it needs a live audience to react to it. An AI audience laughing at an AI thing is another art form.”