AI-Generated George Carlin Drops Comedy Special That Daughter Speaks Out Against: ‘No Machine Will Ever Replace His Genius’::Stand-up comedian George Carlin has been brought back to life in an artificial intelligence-generated special called ‘I’m Glad I’m Dead.’

  • Arkaelus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    136
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    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.

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      42
      ·
      10 months ago

      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

      What gets me is the creator says they “studied” Carlin in order to match his style. Imagine consuming Carlin’s entire body of work and still somehow thinking this was a good idea…

      • not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        10 months ago

        I’m guessing they started with Carlin to get all the fuss out of the way up front, so they can get on with doing all the others with minimal outcry.

    • KingJalopy @lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      10 months ago

      Or they’re smart by trying to create outrage and generate those tasty clicks

    • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      10 months ago

      I’d imagine there’s a skit to make ironising the whole situation, but I’m not sure anyone can pull it off just like him, or at all. Not this random guy refurbishing his older material to make a fake guest appearance. Before all his punchlines were days of hard work, and it would be twice of that to correctly mimick his style, gestures, sense of humor and guess what he’d say now. It’d be lovely to see a talented impersonator to try that, and using AI like that is just selling this guy cheap. He deserves a better homage if there’s one needed, and not pushed like that for promotion and without contacting his family.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    62
    arrow-down
    10
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    “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?

    • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      29
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      Should we let pitching machines play pro baseball now, just because they can throw any pitch with pinpoint control?

      This is how we end up with Blernsball

      • db2@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        The blerns are loaded, the count’s three blerns and two anti-blerns and the infield blern rule is in effect, right?

    • XEAL@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      10
      ·
      10 months ago

      False analogy falacy. Comparing AI impersonation to pitching machines in pro baseball involves dissimilar contexts and functionalities.

      AI-based tools makes creating certain content easier, why being pissed at that? The guy who created the imperson clearly stated that the content was AI generated so there is no intended deception. He even wrote the script himself.

      It’s like being pissed at a baker for using an electric dough kneader instead of his hands to make bread, as it’s not made in the exact same way a human would work.

    • bhmnscmm@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      22
      ·
      10 months ago

      It’s not the exact same way, but it’s still essentially the same outcome. Your pitching machine example doesn’t make sense because AI doesn’t do anything with pinpoint control.

      This objection is similar to saying photography isn’t an art form; all you do is point and press a button. In reality there is a lot more to it than that.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    10 months ago

    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.

    • frezik@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      This has happened with the estates of famous people for a long time. It didn’t start with the current trend of deep learning systems.

      Tupac’s estate has mined every single little recording he did and pressed it to an album. Gene Roddenberry’s notes got turned into two series (Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda), both of which started pretty good and slowly degraded over time. The Tolkien estate was held back by Christopher for a long time, but now he’s gone, the remaining heirs are happy to rake in the cash, and they’re being thoughtless about what they greenlight (like the Gollum game) (oh, and there’s only about 20 years for them to keep the copyright, which isn’t that long; Peter Jackson movies were about 20 years ago).

      Franz Kafka instructed all his unpublished manuscripts be burned when he died. GRRM has instructed that even if he doesn’t finish A Song of Ice and Fire before his death, it will not be picked up by another author to finish. These are wise people.

      • Holli25@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        10 months ago

        A notable exception would be Robert Jordan and his Wheel of Time series. He prepared notes so someone could finish the work and his widow picked Brandon Sanderson to finish the series. But I think it feels easier to milk it than to be thoughtful with the life’s work of someone, as this requires a lot “would he have liked it” and to know this you would have to start caring early.

  • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    10 months ago

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

  • Chakravanti@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    10 months ago

    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.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    10 months ago

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

  • nick@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    10 months ago

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

  • unreasonabro@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    10 months ago

    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.

  • Nusm@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    10 months ago

    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.

    • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      10 months ago

      People never stopped talking about her dad. This junk isn’t the boost to the real Carlin’s place in pop culture some are painting it as.