Daughter of George Carlin horrified someone cloned her dad with AI for hour special The makers of an hour-long AI-generated comedy special mimicking the late and great American comedian and actor George Carlin have been criticized for, apparently, not obtaining explicit permission from his family to impersonate his voice and style for the vid. The show, titled "George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead," was uploaded …
George Carlin--
“I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.”
“I don't like ass kissers, flag wavers or team players. I like people who buck the system. Individualists. I often warn people: "Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, 'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is, 'Maybe not. But there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity.'" Avoid teams at all cost. Keep your circle small. Never join a group that has a name. If they say, "We're the So-and-Sos," take a walk. And if, somehow, you must join, if it's unavoidable, such as a union or a trade association, go ahead and join. But don't participate; it will be your death. And if they tell you you're not a team player, congratulate them on being observant.”
Even if someone wants to believe Carlin would have approved of this sort of thing, it was his decision (or lack of decision) that left his rights in the hands of his daughter. So it is now her decision.
If some future comedian/actor/etc. wants to insure their views are respected after their death, they need to consult a lawyer before they die to set up the appropriate arrangements.
>Even if someone wants to believe Carlin would have approved of this sort of thing, it was his decision (or lack of decision) that left his rights in the hands of his daughter. So it is now her decision.
By the accounts I've read, she is objecting to this.
"no I in team"
"yeah, but there's 4 in 'platitude quoting idiot'"
or
write out the word team in a font that is "balloon-like" (you know - fat letters, not just lines)... then colour in the bit above and below the crossbar of the "A" - "look, there's teh "I", right in the A-hole"
or
"So what? There's a fucked-up 'me' in 'team'!!" (FTFY)
generally find no-one quotes that asinine cliché around me ever again.
There's a typo in the second paragraph: it reads "The show, titled "George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead," was uploaded on Tuesday to YouTube by actor and comedian Will Sasso and podcaster Chad Kultgen.",
which should of course be:
"The show, titled "George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead," was uploaded on Tuesday to YouTube by sleezeball and plagiarist Will Sasso and slimebucket Chad Kultgen."
An artist impersonating another (or anyone) is ok as a one off, but an AI doing so implies algorithmic mass reproduction, which is something else altogether (like photocopying whole books to re-sell them; back in the days ...). I hope Kelly has her father's spirit and goes all the way in getting this crookery nipped in the bud, and then some! Good going!
On the other hand, it's new material "in the style of" someone famous. I doubt it would even be a story if someone did it with my likeness, even before I'm dead.
I'm not comfortable with what has happened, but I'm not sure it's actually "wrong". I'm not even sure I agree with descendants or an "estate" being able to continue to collect royalties after someone dies, from their works. They already inherited the money earned and the "goods and chattels" Why should they continue to profit from the ongoing "work" of someone now dead? It's all a bit of a conundrum.
On the other hand, the material used to create the AI is all copyrighted material under current law, so yeah, what they did is wrong.
What I dont understand is why these people believe that everything that exists and is useable by ML systems suddenly belongs to them and that they are free to do what they please with it ?
It's not their intellectual property. What they are doing is theft and/or plagiarism.
Make an AI comedian , fine, but make it "create" new original material.
Technically, this one will fall under "parody" and "using likeness". I think it's important to remember "It's the person asking the AI to do things" that infringes laws .
Contrary to what people say, it isn't possible to accidentally get AI to do this. You have to go out of your way to get this kind of result (which is why IMO most of the AI copyright lawsuits will fail)
They both store and retrieve data, just badly. It doesn't matter whether it comes back mangled a bit when we all know what you put in and what you got out. By that logic, I can record music onto a cassette, read that into a file, and it's a completely new work because listen, you can hear some static and annoying degradation, so it's not the same as what was put in.
Yamaha solved this problem for its Vocaloid voice software by coming to a legal agreement with the source human for its "Hatsune Miku" voice: the voice actress' recorded voice (or the parameters derived from such recording) was/were altered in a way which ensured no one would mistake Miku's synthetic voice for the VA's real voice.
Thus, the VA (and her future jobs, and future income!) was/were not supplanted by the synthesized version.
That was a mutually-agreed-upon solution. However, "the genie is out of the bottle", and un-authorized reproductions of peoples' voices and faces will continue to be created, and lawsuits relating to those will continue to be launched.
It's big-money solicitors' heaven.
This type of use of "AI" is horrifying and despicable, but also completely predictable. At least this was something that had the potential to be amusing; the vast majority of what I see churned out by AI image mills on Crackbook and elsewhere is just teenage wanking material. Millions in research. Billions in service provisioning hardware. All to feed the fantasies of horny fanbois.
The older fanbois obsess about specific stars, not just any female form presented to them. Cross fan-fic cesspools with AI generative tools and you have an inkling of why artists are so afraid of the abuses this technology is ripe for - it goes far beyond merely "ripping off" their skills and talents and into outright destroying their careers in some cases. There are already a lot of people who don't realize all these "private" pages on Crackbook are AI generated and stolen imagery with no connection to the stars in question.
We need to fix this before children are ruining their own and each others lives.
OTOH, if the tools are easily available, it might benefit younger generations. Currently you can easily 'ruin your life' doing something stupid that is recorded and posted by anyone nearby with a cellphone and X/Facebook/Instagram account.
Do stupid shit, broadcast to the world. Older generations could move to another town for a fresh start.
"No, it wasn't me doing that when I was a teen. It's AI generated."
Worldwide anonymity might be gone forever, but this could give plausible deniability.
If nothing it trustworthy, then where does that leave society?
There's already millions of people who think the moon landing was faked, despite the tech for doing that not being around back then. It was literally easier to do it live than "fix it in post"!
I read someone yesterday claiming that 9/11 had CGI planes added in real time... We are doomed.
On the one hand, as a very big fan of Carlin, who thankfully got a chance to see him live before he died (even if it was a small venue and he was using it to memorize some of the bits for his next HBO special), I tend to think that the world needs more Carlin. On the other hand, as I understand it, ripping off jokes from another comedian is like the greatest sin you can commit in that world. So, training an AI using his decades spanning work to mimic him seems like it would fall pretty squarely in that general category. I'm guessing these two people wouldn't exactly be pleased if someone pulled the same stunt using their likenesses without permission.
I also wonder how well this would actually work, because Carlin's routines changed quite a bit over the years. In the 70s he was doing lighthearted stuff like Hippy Dippy The Weatherman, and then during the 80s and 90s he began his journey towards angry old man.
Bad form. Very bad form. In a universe where anyone has access to YouTube, and anyone can send an email or other form of notification to anyone, I think it was a big mistake to publish this video without taking any precautions.
Points off also for taking a person's death as a good moment to capitalize on his reputation and make more views for the video. That smacks of scavenging to me, and scavengers aren't among the noble animals.
The training data was used without permission, which is one cause. Parts of it were used in the final work, another cause. You don't have to copy the entire thing for copyright to matter. For example, if I like the sound of one hit of a drum in a song you recorded, it is copyright infringement if I cut out that sample and use it in mine, even if literally every other note and sound wave in the song is my original creation. You have to license this stuff if someone else owns it.
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