George Carlin may have died over 15 years ago, but an artificial intelligence claims to have resurrected him for a new comedy special that just debuted on YouTube.
Titled I’m Glad I’m Dead, the special was made by Dudesy, which bills itself as a “comedy AI.”
“For the next hour,” the YouTube video’s description reads, “I’ll be doing my best George Carlin impersonation just like a human being would. I tried to capture his iconic style to tackle the topics I think the comedy legend would be talking about today. The chaos of the current American political landscape and class system, the influence of reality TV, and the increasing role of technology in society as AI is poised to change humanity forever are just a few of the subjects I cover.”
You can see the results for this “impersonation” for yourself below. I honestly … did not get very far into it.
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I would not purport to be a George Carlin expert, but I cannot imagine he would have liked this. (Based on this tweet by Carlin’s daughter, my instinct appears justified.)
According to USA Today, Dudesy “is an AI comedy platform from Mad TV alum Will Sasso and podcaster Chad Kultgen.” I was honestly shocked to hear that a standup comedian was one of the people behind this thing. What sort of standup would be cool with feeding another comic’s ideas into a computer and having it spit out a sound alike comedy special?
Dudesy previously created an A.I.-generated standup special starring the very-much-still-alive Tom Brady, which resulted in Brady threatening to sue the team behind the thing. After Brady’s lawyers sent Dudesy a cease and desist, per TMZ, they eventually took that video down.
I’m not sure of the legality surrounding an AI standup special based on a dead person’s likeness and persona. But from a moral perspective, I find the entire thing to be quite gross. Unfortunately, I have a feeling this is the only beginning of this sort of content. It’s the sort of depressing development that you wish George Carlin was still alive to put into the proper, dystopian context.
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