Quote:A "new" special was recently released titled "George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead!" Just like the title suggest, Carlin's been dead for the last 16 years. The special was created by an AI program called Dudesy, which did something similar earlier with Tom Brady, but was quickly removed after an onslaught of legal threats from the QB. It's not really surprising how the special was received, with Carlin's daughter saying, "No machine will ever replace his genius. These AI generated products are clever attempts at trying to recreate a mind that will never exist again."
This was the original article I found.
I think that while AI has come a long way, it's still incredibly difficult to emulate the actual human part of people. Carlin is arguably one of the greatest social commentators of the last century. That is an extremely difficult thing to replicate - for any person, let alone a string of 1s and 0s. Is this something that we actually even want? I get that there may be some social good aspects, but this feels like diluting the memory and work of such an influential figure. I may be biased, having grown up on Carlin, but his catalogue of actual work is so expansive - why bother?
Should this be a warning sign for other comedians, entertainers, etc..? Turning in your grave is one thing, but for living people, I feel that there could further implications. Tom Brady's stand-up is one thing, but emulating the cadence and material of living performers in their exact industry... Take Drake for example. Remember the string of songs that came out in 2023 using AI voice replicators? Whether or not they were good, or not is besides the point (although they sounded a lot more like Drake, than Drake's recent catalogue).
What do you think? I wrote more about this here, if you want to check it out. I'm not a big fan of using peoples likeness, whether commercially or not. While the advancements have been cool to see, it can go down a much more malicious route that I'm not sure we have the safeguards in place for.