AI-Generated George Carlin Drops Comedy Special That Daughter Speaks Out Against: ‘No Machine Will Ever Replace His Genius’

This must be the absolute epitome of this AI replication poor taste... The person who thought it would be a good idea to do this with Carlin, probably the one human who hated human bullshit more than anyone else to have ever existed, is either so out of touch they don't even vibrate at the same frequency as the rest of existence, or so far up their own ass that they're staring at their pancreas... An absolutely disgusting move.

“I just want to let you know very clearly that 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"

No, was not developed in the exact same way a human would work, because it's not human. Should we let pitching machines play pro baseball now, just because they can throw any pitch with pinpoint control?

No one cares if it's right or wrong ... absolutely no one cares what anyone thinks about any of it, about ethics, morals, respect or rights.

All anyone cares about is how much money it's going to make.

We should install a turbine onto Carlin's coffin because he's probably spinning so fast right now, he could power New York City.

This is in very poor taste.

I met Kelly Carlin once. She is an awesome human being and cares a lot about her father's legacy.

This is some kind of bad joke right?

I'm not here to rage about the whole human vs machine thing because I honestly don't give two shits. However, this isn't very good. The pacing feels like George Carlin, but that's about it. It's really more like an edgy Ryan Reynolds.

It sounds a lot less like George than I expected.

Of course they can't. But they can and will exploit every single word he's ever said. Then exploit every idiot who gives said AI product and sense of their attention.

Gotta be a dick here though. If they listen to the honestly lying charade running now then they didn't hear him when he explained the first time.

Stupid future run by stupid, greedy fools

This is bullshit, and it's bad for you.

I listened to it and it's genuinely not bad (on a content and voice synthesis level), to the point that I have a hard time believing it was entirely AI-generated. If it's not a fake ghostwritten by the creators, it must have been heavily rerolled and edited to make it so coherent.

This is so tragicomedically the opposite of everything that Carlin was about in so many ways that it’s difficult to fully comprehend

If someone tried that with bill hicks we’d all end up in the matrix in a year.

Y'know, I was a pretty big Carlin fan, I had a few of his albums and even saw him live in concert once. I listened to the whole thing while driving, and I thought this was okay. It's obviously not George Carlin, but it sounded a lot like him, and I can imagine he would approve of many of the jokes. It wasn't a laugh-a-minute, but I did get lost in it a couple of times and forget that it wasn't really him, and I did laugh out loud a few times as well. (The joke about the best comedian for AI being Bill Cosby got me!)

Carlin's comedy was very topical, which doesn't always translate to today, so having new, up-to-date Carlin bits are actually cool. I can understand his daughter's apprehension, but at least people are talking about her dad again, so I would think that's a good thing.

The man was a genius for sure 100% I loved every bit of all the shit he said.

Why do all of the comments make it seem like people think that someone asked chatgpt to write a George Carlin routine or whatever? A human person, not a computer, wrote some comedy in (what they felt) was in the style of George Carlin. The technology portion of this was the cloning of Carlin's voice to "perform" the routine. And you can feel however you want about either part of that. I mean, seems like you'd have to be pretty far up your own ass to think you can just put your own words into the mouth of someone else, especially someone who is no longer in a position to call you a fucking idiot, or not. But the story that people are commenting on, sure seems to be quite different to the actual events that occurred.

As far as the actual story, they know what they did. They know full well that they could have actually did a Carlin impersonation if they had wanted. They could have written their material, went up on stage, said exactly want they were doing, performed their bit, dressed up for the part, hitting as many of the mannerisms as they could. A real, actual, proper attempt at an impersonation. They could have done that, and almost no one would have cared. A few people might have been upset about it, as there always are. But largely, no one would have batted an eye.

But they didn't do that. They did this. They did this, knowing full well that the claim of it being an "impersonation" was bullshit. And knowing full well what the response would be. And it was exactly the response they wanted. All of the attention and outrage they are getting directed at them right now? That was the point.

Honestly he's a fairly offensive choice as a first target for this sort of venture, but I haven't watched the thing yet. Doesn't seem likely it'll be full of the cutting political satire we associate with him, and the jokes I've seen posted from it are tepid af.

Literal ghouls.

• fightin'
• cryin'
• fuckin'
• dyin'

I listened to the whole special, and I can agree with much of what the Carlinbot had to say. I think that's fun.

I know there's overwhelming hatred towards the idea of AI doing stuff like this, but I'm curious as to why exactly that is. I hate this about as much as I hate impressionists, which is a somewhat apt comparison. That is to say, I think it's pretty neat and I'm curious what all went into making it happen, so I can't say I hate it. Could someone break down why this is awful? Is it a "let the dead lie" kind of thing, keeping the dead sacred? Do we want the AI to be completely original, despite it being derivative in nature? Do we simply want AI not to exist at all? Is it just in poor taste? If so, who do we let define what constitutes good or poor taste?

I see AI as a philosophical issue, as it's a technology seeking to cross the uncanny valley and simulate consciousness as we understand it, which has serious implications regarding the nature of consciousness, the concept of the self, how we define life and understanding, how much control we grant this artificial life, what rights artificial life should have, and plenty of other conundrums along the way. I honestly don't think it's as simple as "Carlin wouldn't like this", as this video is ultimately an unsatisfactory impression of a man that only goes on for one hour. There are worse things in the world we could be lambasting (as the Carlinbot points out mid-video), but there are clearly some implications involved that people are very upset by. So, where do we go from here?

I’m not concerned so much about comedians being impersonated than I am about politicians making guest appearances in political ads suddenly saying/supporting untrue things.

This is hilarious; everyone saying Carlin would hate this is essentially putting words in his mouth just like Dudesy did, but Dudesy put a lot more effort in.

"No Machine Will Ever Replace His Genius"

OK, but it's the closest that we can get at the moment.

Fuck whoever did this. That podcaster... Wtf ever. I couldnt even finish reading the article. I am seething with rage at this so hard I'm shaking. I hope the creator of this abomination gets sued so badly, their great grandchildren curse their name because of the inherited debt.

Fucking asshole.

@L4s I will not comment on the ethics of this, but I will say that if I had heard this without being told it's AI generated (and the do tell you, at the start and again at the end) and if I didn't know Carlin was dead, I would easily have believed it was him doing this bit. Now I was never a big Carlin fan (I pretty much only heard what could be played on the radio, and most of his stuff didn't fall into that category) so maybe someone more acquainted with his material would have noticed differences, but to me it was a scary good impression of him.

I have to wonder if the daughter doesn't like it because she realizes that she's (I assume) still getting some small amount of payment when people buy his older stuff, but as much of his material was topical I'm guessing those payments are ever diminishing, and she may fear that AI impressions of him will diminish the sales of his older stuff even further. Either that, or possibly it's unsettling to her that a machine could come that close to making a spot-on impression of her father. I guess if someone created an AI of my dad saying things that he never actually said when he was alive, I would also find it somewhat unsettling and maybe even a little creepy.

I'd also be interested to know exactly how much of the creativity behind this (the script) was created by the AI and how much work there was on the part of humans to make it sound natural. I get that AI can make the audio, that's pretty much a given now, but where did the script come from?

Carlin's entire schtick was anti-intellectual platitudinous. He reminds me of Trump with a sense of humor.