George Carlin‘s estate has settled a lawsuit over an AI-generated imitation of the late comedian, with the creators agreeing to remove it from their YouTube channel and podcast feed.
In January, the Dudesy podcast released “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” which purported to be an hour-long special created by artificial intelligence. Carlin died in 2008, but the special featured a sound-alike voice doing Carlin-esque material on contemporary topics like trans rights and defunding the police.
The estate sued, alleging that the special violated the estate’s copyrights and its publicity right to Carlin’s name, image and likeness.
I looked up the transcript for it out of curiosity. The jokes aren’t terrible I guess; they read a lot like the Carlin bits I’m familiar with. However, I got to the AI part and was like, “nah, they’re pushing it too hard.” I couldn’t see the complaint until I got to that bit, and then I could understand why it made his estate uncomfortable.
If they’d used the AI bit to poke fun at themselves and talk about how AI’s even replacing dead people without trying to push AI as the future, then I’d be confused as to why the Carlin estate is upset. However, right now AI primarily benefits the rich, so pushing AI as the future of humanity is contradictory even within the context of fake-Carlin routine because it goes against his takes about rich people ruining everything.