Lawsuit claims copyright infringement

The estate of George Carlin is suing the makers of a special which purportedly used AI to create an hour-long show in the voice of the late, groundbreaking comedian.

Claiming infringement of copyright and the right to privacy, the lawsuit calls the release a ‘bastardisation of Carlin’s real work’ and ‘a piece of computer-generated click-bait which detracts from the value of Carlin’s comedic works and harms his reputation’.

Earlier this month the Dudesy podcast released I’m Glad I’m Dead, which it said was created with the aid of artificial intelligence – much to the chagrin of the comedian’s daughter Kelly.

She said at the time: ‘My dad spent a lifetime perfecting his craft from his very human life, brain, and imagination. No machine will ever replicate his genius.’

The new lawsuit, filed in California and obtained by the Deadline website accuses the defendants – including podcast hosts Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen – of seeking to  ‘capitalise on the name, reputation, and likeness of George Carlin’, who died in 2008.

It says no one had permission to use the comic’s likeness or copyrighted works, which AI software would have trawled to replicate speech patterns. And it adds: ‘In addition to the immediate fact of infringement, defendants’ AI-generated "George Carlin Special" may also deter younger audiences, who are unfamiliar with George Carlin, from engaging with his real work that is his legacy. 

‘Defendants must be held accountable for adding new, fake content to the canon of work associated with Carlin without his permission (or that of his estate).

The introductory voiceover for the video explained that the AI engine analysed five decades of Carlin’s original standup comedy routines to train its database, which the lawsuit says amounts to a confession that they made unauthorised copies of the copyright works – or as the court papers put it ‘casual theft of a great American artist’s work’.

Their suit seeks unspecified damages and an injunction for all copies of the AI special to be destroyed.

Dudesy suggested a possible line of defence in the introduction to the special, having the AI say in the comedian’s voice: ’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.

‘I listened to all of George Carlin's material and did my best to imitate his voice, cadence and attitude as well as the subject matter I think would have interested him today so think of it like Andy Kaufman impersonating Elvis or like Will Ferrell impersonating George W Bush.’

The legal papers counter this by saying the AI special has ‘no comedic or creative value absent its self-proclaimed connection with George Carlin. It does not, for example, satirise Carlin as a performer or offer an independent critique of society.’

Quite how much real AI is used in Dudesly, and how much it is a conceit, has been the subject of much discussion among the podcast’s fans.

Last year, Sasso told Business Insider the bot ‘is not fake’ but would not  go into details of the AI technology, saying he was legally bound not to reveal trade secrets.

The lawsuit says it doesn’t matter how much of the special was faked, saying: ;Whether the Dudesy Special is indeed, from start to finish, the product of an artificial intelligence or simply relies on AI-powered tools to help a human better imitate George Carlin, the result is ultimately same: Defendants always promoted and  presented the Dudesy Special as an AI-generated George Carlin comedy special, where George Carlin was "resurrected" with the use of modern technology. 

‘In short, defendants sought to capitalise on the name, reputation, and likeness of George Carlin.’

I’m Glad I’m Dead, covers topics such as mass shootings, Donald Trump and why religious people praise God for the good things in life but do not blame him for the bad.

The fake Carlin even jokes that stand-up could be erased by artificial intelligence , saying sarcastically: ‘I know what all the stand-up comics across the globe are saying right now, "I’m an artist and my art form is too creative, too nuanced, too subtle to be replicated by a machine. No computer program can tell a fart joke as good as me".’

Elsewhere,  he says: ‘Art used to b  made by artists that wanted to challenge us to think about the world and our place in it now it's content made by corporations that don't want anyone thinking about anything. These billionaires don't want a thinking  population, they want a distracted population.’

It is not the first time comedians and AI have become involved in legal tussles. Last year, Sarah Silverman, launched a lawsuit against ChatGPT owner OpenAI and Facebook’s parent company Meta alleging copyright infringement for scraping the contents of her autobiography Bedwetter.

The full Carlin lawsuit is here.

Published: 26 Jan 2024