The estate of George Carlin has filed a lawsuit over a fake hourlong comedy special that purportedly uses artificial intelligence to recreate the late standup comic’s style and material.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday asks that a judge order the podcast outlet, Dudesy, to immediately take down the audio special, “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” in which a synthesis of Carlin, who died in 2008, delivers commentary on current events.

Carlin’s daughter, Kelly Carlin, said in a statement that the work is “a poorly-executed facsimile cobbled together by unscrupulous individuals to capitalize on the extraordinary goodwill my father established with his adoring fanbase.”

The Carlin estate and its executor, Jerold Hamza, are named as plaintiffs in the suit, which alleges violations of Carlin’s right of publicity and copyright. The named defendants are Dudesy and podcast hosts Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    363·
    10 months ago

    Good. I don’t care if it’s really AI or not. It’s fucking tasteless. Even if they lose this suit, I’m glad they did it just on principle.

    • yuriy@lemmy.world
      7·
      10 months ago

      Hang on, I’ve just assumed this whole time that it was a Carlin impersonator who actually performed the whole special, and then just used AI for the face and voice. Did people actually think this was created by typing some variation of “gimme new george carlin” into GPT or some shit?

  • magnetosphere@kbin.social
    5·
    10 months ago

    I know all the good domain names have been taken… but even when scraping the bottom of the barrel, they could have done better than “Dudesy”. What the fuck, people.

  • guyrocket@kbin.social
    51·
    10 months ago

    I watched a few minutes of this. Awful. This guy should be sued for wasting everyone’s time.

  • mommykink@lemmy.world
    31·
    10 months ago

    This is great. There was no reason for there to be any mention of George Carlin in the video’s title, especially not crediting it to him and especially not with a title like that. I’m curious if the creator ever sat back and thought that what they were doing was wrong.

    A real AI comedian trained by living comedians would be an interesting feat, but coming right out the gate with the first real example being such a blatant theft of likeness sours so much opinion people will have on the idea in the future.