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The estate of comedy legend George Carlin has filed a lawsuit against the creators of an hour-long video featuring an artificial intelligence version of him, accusing them of stealing “the work of a great American artist.”
A voice that bears a striking resemblance to the comedian, who died of heart failure in 2008, appears in a “comedy special” titled “George Carlin: I’m glad I’m dead“, which was uploaded to YouTube earlier this month by the Dudesy channel.
Carlin’s estate filed a lawsuit in California Federal Court, alleging copyright infringement and violation of the late comedian’s right of publicity.
There’s no visual representation of Carlin (instead, the video shows a series of AI-generated images), but the voiceover touches on familiar topics like religion and politics, while also discussing the comedian’s own death.
This legal action illustrates how AI in creative works is one of the biggest issues in entertainment and comes after a months-long writers’ strike in Hollywood last year, in part over the use of AI by studies to generate scripts.
“Carlin, one of the most legendary comedians in history, dedicated his life to perfecting his craft, only for a pair of podcasters and a mysterious AI to create a special called “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” Without permission, and I posted it on YouTube,” Carlin’s estate said in a statement to NBC News Thursday night.
The lawsuit said: “Defendants’ AI-generated ‘George Carlin Special’ is not a creative work. It is a piece of computer-generated clickbait that detracts from Carlin’s comedic works and damages his reputation. It is a casual theft of “The work of a great American artist,” the statement said.
The Dudesy YouTube channel is run by comedian Will Sasso and writer Chad Kultgen, who host a weekly podcast of the same name. Also named as defendants in the lawsuit are several unidentified people involved in making the video and developing the artificial intelligence technology. NBC News has contacted Dudesy for comment.
An introduction to the video explains that it was made using Dudesy’s own AI tool, which had been trained to replicate Carlin’s delivery and content.
“I’m Dudesy, a comedy AI, and I’m excited to share with you my second one-hour comedy special! I’m calling it ‘George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead!’ For the next hour I’ll do my best George Carlin impersonation, just like a human being would,” he says.
Sasso said in a podcast commenting on reaction to the video last week that the AI version was not a replacement for the real version.
“I learned that AI cannot replace Geroge Carlin and therefore it cannot replace me or my friend Chad,” he said. “It’s interesting how heated people get about it.”
In the same podcast episode, Kultgen explained why the video had caused such a stir, while other AI versions of Carlin had not.
“The others, it was just ‘Look, we can imitate his voice.’ It’s not just about imitating that, but taking the art form itself, an hour-long comedy, and saying, ‘I can do that too.’ art form,’ he said.
Carlin’s daughter, Kelly Carlin, said in a statement: “I understand and share the desire for more George Carlin. I, too, want more time with my father. But it is ridiculous to proclaim that he has been ‘resurrected’ with AI.”
He continued: “The ‘George Carlin’ in that video is not the beautiful human being who defined his generation and raised me with love. He is a poorly executed facsimile, cobbled together by unscrupulous individuals to capitalize on the extraordinary goodwill my father established with her adoring fan base.”
The estate’s attorney, Josh Schiller, said in a statement that AI risks becoming “a tool that allows bad faith actors to replace creative expression, exploit creators’ existing work, and enrich themselves at the expense of others”.