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.
Eh…. I don’t know that I can agree with this.
I understand the intent behind it, but this specific instance is legitimately in parallel with impersonators, or satire. Hear me out.
They are impersonating his voice, using new content in his style, and make no claim to be legitimate.
So this comes down to “this is in bad taste” which, while I can understand and might even agree with… isn’t illegal.
The only novel concept in this, is that “scary tech” was used. There was no fraud, there was no IP violation, and no defamation. Where is the legal standing?
They didn’t write satire in his style, they sampled his actual work with a machine. It’s not a parody of George Carlin, it’s an inferior approximation of him.
I didn’t say this was satire, I said it was in line with satire on a legal front. And why did you ignore the “impersonator” line immediately before it and jump straight into parody?
They sampled his work, yes. To get voice, pacing, image, etc. they didn’t then have it spit out copies, or even remixes of his previous work, they had it create new content and made it clear it was not him.
I don’t see this as any different than an impersonator watching hundreds of hours of his routines, getting into character visually and verbally, and walking out on stage to do their own routine.
In fact, let me just ask directly: would you be taking issue with this if it was a real human, no AI involved, who had dressed and trained to move and sound approximately like the man, and then filmed it and put it online? Would you say that is illegal?
It is not in any way in line with Satire. They sampled his work with a machine.
If a real human did this, no AI involved, then that human’s interpretation of Carlin’s mannerisms, speech patterns, and humor would all be much more varied than if that human remixed Carlin’s own words and copied his own imagery.
Plus, if somebody came out on stage and started calling themselves Stephen Colbert or Larry the Cable Guy, then guess what? That’s fucking illegal.
Oh good, you understood what I said.
Tell me you’ve never seen a high quality impersonator without telling me you’ve never seen a high quality impersonator. 🤦🏻♂️
No, it really isn’t. Why would it be? Is Carlin a law enforcement officer? Is there an attempt to commit fraud I missed in the middle? What law do you think impersonating a random person breaks?
Not to mention, the title description and opening line make it pretty obvious this isn’t Carlin.
I also noticed a lot of skirting around my question with a distinct lack of a direct answer. So I’ll ask it again: If that was a human who put out the exact same video, and AI was not involved, would you have a problem with it? Because it really seems like you wouldn’t.
I remember when impersonators, such as Rich Little, used to show up on TV. Their whole bit was the skill it took to do the impersonations, not so much what they said. And I don’t remember any instance of them only doing one person. There are single impersonation shows, like a Judy Garland concert, but I am not sure where that falls legally.
When I think of impersonator personally, I go straight to Elvis impersonators. It’s a running joke in movies, they’re all over Las Vegas, and you can rent an Elvis impersonator for various events, including weddings, in just about any major city.
You said:
And FYI, Stephen Colbert got a Cease and Desist notice for being Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report when he left the Viacom network for CBS. Because that is how intellectual properties work, when you make money off of your character or your image then it is your property: that is also the basis for which public figures and actors can refuse images or artworks being used for monetary gain outside of fair use or depictions of public settings.
I could send you a Cease and Decist notice on my finest letterhead insisting that you stop being a stupid overreaching authoritarian. That doesn’t mean a court would uphold it. C&D isn’t proof of anything.
Wait. I can just send Cease and Decist letters to anyone for anything?
Wouldn’t the issue there be the fact that “of the Colbert Report” is using the actual name of the show in a way that would create profit for him? This, profiting off of someone else’s IP? It’s not the fact that he is “Stephen Colbert”. It’s the part that isn’t his name.
No, actually, they tried to claim ownership over the satirical character Stephen Colbert. I really love how he responded to it, btw, here is a clip TLDR: he brought on Stephen Colbert’s identical twin cousin Stephen Colbert, completely unrelated to the Colbert Report show and characters.
Thanks - oh I love him
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clip
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Looks like you are correct mostly. It looks like it was actually the character and persona from the Colbert report that he can’t use. It would be like taking the show to a different network I guess would be the argument which usually involves the show being bought. It’s also weird because the company was basically suing itself.
It also led to Colbert mentioning that he didn’t know how to act as the normal him, so I think it’s cool he at least got something positive out of it, even if it’s a huge blow for sure.
It’s weird, because if the character was named like Sean Spencer, it would be expected that you couldn’t just use the same character. I’m surprised he didn’t have a legal leg to stand on given the character has his name, and he could argue that it’s simply his own personality, but if he and his lawyers didn’t expect it to be winnable I’ll take their word on it.
Either way, it’s interesting information. Thanks for the correction.
So you’re telling me you’ve never heard of celebrity impersonators? Elvis would be one of the more famously impersonated, but even living individuals have impersonators. Hilariously, there have been stories of impersonators winning in an impersonation contest when the actual individual being impersonated was also in the contest.
You k ow what doesn’t happen with celebrity impersonators? They don’t get arrested or successfully sued. Because there’s nothing illegal about it.
Now, the CnD Colbert got is a different story. He likely signed paperwork saying he wouldn’t “be the character” after leaving. Not to mention, he was the literal actor who portrays that character.
On the other hand, you notice how SNL doesn’t get sued for their impersonations?…
Are you noticing a theme yet?
Because I am. You just won’t answer my simple question. So let me jump to the assumption that you’d be fine with it if it was fully human made. That begs the question, why is AI different? If the poster came out tomorrow with proof AI was not involved, why would it suddenly be okay?
AI is different because a human didn’t make it lol that’s the point
How does that make sense from a legal standpoint? Because a human made the AI.
I’ve said it multiple times, you simply lack reading comprehension.
A Human product is different enough from George Carlin in their parodies or impersonation, although as I outlined even an impersonation can require approval from an entity claiming ownership over the likeness of the character. However, the AI product is not notably different, it is more akin to a copy and paste job. If you had a high school diploma you would know you’re not allowed to copy and paste other people’s work and call it your own.
It’s a copy and paste job, without using any of his original content. Gooooot it.
I’d also like you to provide an example of an impersonator being successfully litigated against for simply impersonating someone on stage. The key point is successfully since I can send you a cease and desist for literally anything, and sue you for literally anything.
And just as a side note, ad hominems aren’t a great tool for discussions. They don’t back up your point at all and just come off as you getting angry. Which is weird considering this situation literally doesn’t effect you in the slightest.
They trained the AI on his material. That’s theft of IP without a license or agreement.
So any human comedian listening and learning from other comedians is also STEALING the intellectual PROPERTY of them? That is very incendiary language btw.
Morally this imho comes down to a workers right issue. So there are legitimate reasons to argue that AI should not take our jobs. A kind of socialist market protection act.
But to use intellectual property in this case is just asking to make anything “Disney like” to be treated as copyright by Disney.
PS: BTW actually listen to the video https://youtu.be/2kONMe7YnO8 it is eerily good.
Presumably they paid to see the show each time they wanted to go learn from him. Also, it’s extremely poor form to copy jokes. Learning the art of telling jokes like using callbacks wouldn’t require watching solely one comedian either.
No matter how much they say this isn’t Carlin, the entire selling premise here is that it’s Carlin.
The AI didn’t copy jokes, it learned how to generate jokes just like Carlin. The point of this impersonation for me is to be able to actually compare it to Carin, as a benchmark.
It seems also clear that while this is mediocre at best, the next versions of AI will become as good as, and then better than Carlin. And then better than any human comedian could ever be. Might take a while but no doubt in my mind we’ll get there sooner than later. So then they’ll use artificial persona that become brands and are fully owned by corporation.
And they’ll not just be insanely funny, they’ll also become incredibly good at propaganda and reprogramming human minds to their master’s agenda. Now a human entertainer at least has to have some humanity.
My point is that IP law is the WORST thing you can use to try to limit AIs. The hurt feelings or lost moneys of Carlin’s heirs or other corporations are so utterly irrelevant in regards to the repercussions of this issue.
Machines aren’t people. Machines don’t learn. Machines copy data, manipulate and replicate it. That is copyright infringement. The laws for Machine duplication don’t apply to human learning.
It’s called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning
That they actually learned to do creative writing is the shocking thing. Mediocre so far, but they will improve. And denial won’t help.
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalize to unseen data, and thus perform tasks without explicit instructions. Recently, generative artificial neural networks have been able to surpass many previous approaches in performance. Machine learning approaches have been applied to many fields including large language models, computer vision, speech recognition, email filtering, agriculture, and medicine, where it is too costly to develop algorithms to perform the needed tasks. ML is known in its application across business problems under the name predictive analytics. Although not all machine learning is statistically based, computational statistics is an important source of the field’s methods.
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I teared up listening to this special. It was like he was still alive. A lot of good material and definitely in his spirit. People who want to lock up our culture behind paywalls can get bent.
No don’t you understand. If we don’t enforce copyright laws we won’t get a 19th Fast and the Furious movie.