Robot George Carlin Stand-Up Special

One day we will move beyond the stage where you can spend half an hour making an AI video and generate headlines. Unfortunately, we are not there yet. The latest piece of junk from the AI ​​hype machine comes in the form of an unauthorized, “AI-generated” George Carlin comedy special — and almost no one, even those involved in it, seems to like it. It was clearly made without the late comedian’s family’s permission or any semblance of good taste, but here’s the best part: It’s not even clear how much of the special was actually created with artificial intelligence .

Welcome back to This Week’s Dumbest Tech News, Gizmodo’s Monday column where we dive into the best and worst that technology has to offer. This week we explore Dudesy, the artificial intelligence comedy podcast and video channel run by comedian Will Sasso and author Chad Kultgen, and the tech company they declined to name. On Tuesday, Dudesy released the special, “George Carlin: I’m glad I’m dead”. Even Sasso and Kurtgen seemed uncomfortable with the project, not to mention the countless negative comments and outrage from Carlin’s family. In other words: it’s stupid.

“It’s horrible,” Carlin’s daughter Kelly Carlin told Gizmodo. “Dead people don’t have the right to vote, and that’s what’s particularly disturbing to me. They’re voting for him. They think it’s OK to do that, which is disrespectful of His autonomy. It’s a violation of His humanity and personhood, and of course had his creative integrity. Ethically, it was the worst move I could imagine.”

The special begins with an AI-generated voice describing the work it did to create the special, as if the robot had done the work itself.

“My name is Dudesy and I’m a comedic artificial intelligence,” the voice said. “What you are about to hear is not George Carlin. This is my imitation of George Carlin, and I do it in exactly the same way as a human impressionist. I listened to all of George Carlin’s material and tried to imitate him as best I could. The sound, the rhythm and the attitude, and the themes that I think he would be interested in today.”

The film then launches into an hour-long stand-up comedy simulacra, in which a voice that sounds a lot like George Carlin, who died in 2008, entertains the pretend audience.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to come up with new material, but I do have a good excuse…” said the artificial intelligence Kalin, pausing for dramatic effect. “I’m dead!” the crudely produced voice of the artificial audience elicited laughter and applause.

Some reviewers seemed obsessed with the stand-up special, but calling the reviews “mixed” would be generous.Dozens of journalists fired up Google Docs to launch cheap attacks on AI Carlin (can you imagine something so mean), but loudest response From the daughter of a stand-up comedy legend. Kelly Carlin said Dudesi never contacted her or her father’s estate and told Gizmodo she was considering legal action.

“He really hated people putting words in his mouth,” Kelly Carlin said. “This is the most shocking version of what happened.”

Back in 1999, an early text meme mistakenly attributed to George Carlin spread rapidly through forwarded email messages. This sad article, titled “The historical paradox of our time,” much to the comedian’s annoyance, he kept saying a statement Explaining that he did not put this sentence on the homepage of his website:

“Most ‘humor’ on the Internet is stupid,” George Carlin wrote. “I think die-hard fans who follow my work closely will be able to spot the fakes because the tone is so different. But casual fans have no way of knowing that some people might believe that I’m actually capable of writing some of this stuff, and that bothers me. ”

You might think that Dudesy’s human companions would be supportive of its work, but Sasso and Kultgen began distancing themselves from AI Carlin even before its release.

“I personally don’t want to hear a fucking Nirvana song that wasn’t written by Kurt Cobain and played by fucking Nirvana. It’s not true and it doesn’t matter. Anyone can make an impression,” Sasso said Episode 87 of the Dudesy Podcast (Available in video and audio formats). “Dudesy ate all of George Carlin’s specials and pulled off some miracles, but by definition it’s nothing new. It was taken from a bunch of other shit.”

Sasso and Kultgen worked with an unnamed technology company on the Dudesy project; they said confidentiality agreement Prevent them from revealing the name of the organization. If you take the podcast at face value, the company independently produces Dudesy’s work and presents it to the hosts without letting them know what’s coming. During the podcast introducing AI Carlin, Sasso and Kultgen appeared to be hearing about the special for the first time.

“Oh my God,” Sasso said, holding his head in his hands as Dudesi explained Carlin’s plan. “I don’t know what that means.”

Sasso and Kurtgen celebrate Dudesy, talking to it as if it’s still alive.But the two of them are obviously uncomfortable about Project Carlin, and debating whether the public will welcome the continued emergence of artificial intelligence art.

“What’s next? Will Dudesy do her own one-hour talk show?” Kurtgen asked. “How about a fully artificial intelligence stand-up comedian?”

“Nobody cares about this,” Sasso said.

The AI ​​Carlin special has no accompanying video. You can watch it on YouTube, but it’s just Carlin’s fake voice speaking over hastily generated AI art slides. While the audio is clearly generated by algorithms, the content itself raises questions.

Dudesy coyly said that AI tools make top-down special.Presumably, our hallucinations like what Carlin said were generated by something like Chat GPT. But while large language models can generate incredibly convincing text, the whole thing feels a little too polished. The script doesn’t possess the qualities of an artificial intelligence author; it seems a bit too good to be true. Because the company behind Dudesy has some kind of weird secret, it’s hard to pin down.

We contacted representatives for Sasso and Kurtgen to ask how much human intervention was involved in I’m Glad I’m Dead. They didn’t respond.

In the special, Fake Carlin rails against conservatives, dives into the details of gun control, transgender rights, Elon Musk, and predictably discusses the future of artificial intelligence. That sounds a lot like what Carlin might say if he were still alive and taking the stage in 2024. Carlin’s simulated voice tells us that he’s the first comedian to come back from the dead, but he certainly won’t be the last. It goes on to suggest that artificial intelligence is the future of stand-up comedy, and in true Carlin form, says we shouldn’t be so precious about the whole thing. It’s a subject worth debating, but one thing’s for sure: Carlin’s special isn’t funny.

“If I can’t value his presence as a person, then I don’t know what we’re going to do as a species,” Kelly Carlin said. “Sure, people take things like art too seriously, but George Carlin didn’t write or perform this, so take his name out of it. It could be “inspired by”, “homage”, “Carlin” “Lin style” or “style”. Call it something else and I won’t care. Standup is a living human experience. Sure, a lot of people watch on TV, but stand-up comedians have to leave their homes and go to theaters to do their job, and that requires a live audience reaction. AI Audiences scoff at AI things as another art form. “