The beginning and the end of the video are major disclaimers which were drawn out long enough that perhaps some viewers started to wish they were dead also.
After the disclaimer, Dudesy launched into some of Carlin’s favorite topics and some that, had he not died already, would surely be on his list of things to mock about our species.
I confess I enjoyed the show (1 hour 0 minutes 35 seconds in the link above). A few times, Dudesy missed the mark on imitating Carlin’s voice. Oveerall, though, I found the commentary to be pretty close to what I thought Carlin woudl’ve said.
Anyone else see this? Do you agreee with my take on it?
I agree 100% that there is no need for an AI to imitate George Carlin. If I want to listen to George Carlin (one of my favorites) then I will listen to him. Why on earth would I want to listen to an AI imitation?
Maybe there is something interesting in displaying what an AI can do in this respect but otherwise I have no interest.
I would add Kelly Carlin has an interest in protecting her father’s work in a business sense. She would not want it hijacked or diluted which could diminish the value of those properties.
I listened for five seconds. Sounds NOTHING like George Carlin. Just a generic voice. So this is all just trying to use Carlin’s name to make money and it has nothing to do with Carlin.
Sorry. It’s appropriation of a likeness for the ultimate purposes of profit.
ANYONE can produce AI George Carlin. You can do it, I can do it. I’ll produce it something and call it “AI George Carlin” because the only standard is that of the creator. It could be 60 minutes of me farting, but I choose to call it AI George Carlin. And really my opinion is the only one that matters.
Now I suppose someone could do a George Carlin tribute act. Something like Bobo Smithee presents the comedy of George Carlin. And dress like George Carlin and try to imitate him. As far as I know all of that would be legal. Could Bobo Smithee tell new jokes as “George Carlin”? I don’t know, I never see any of the tribute bands actually playing new material. Just covers. Even if they dress up to look like the original band. I think a living person today representing themselves as George Carlin and presenting new material as George Carlin would be shut down.
Everything AI can do could actually be done by people, and a lot of it is already illegal.
But it is sacrosanct. If I want to listen to George Carlin then, I want to listen to George Carlin. Not some facsimile of George Carlin. I am paying for human Carlin’s thoughts. Not some clever mimic.
And, if @duality72 made a living by writing/speaking would you be ok with an AI (or anyone) imitating your work?
The point is that it doesn’t matter what I think because…
How am I possibly going to stop them? Make it illegal for people to create AI models? To share the models? To share prompts? To do all this and listen to the results in the privacy of their own home?
Again, this is just the beginning. As long as it’s clearly labeled “impersonation”, I don’t have much problem with the creation aspect of it and the cat’s out of the bag anyway. Humans derive inspiration from/ imitate each other all the time and we judge “this is too close to X, you’re a hack” or “this is like Y but wittier, you’re great”. That line will be blurred into non-existence by multitudes of AI models. Whether any of us likes it or not.
No, I do not have to get over it. I can voice my displeasure at this shameless act as much as I like. I can’t force others to feel the same way, but I sure wish they did because it is wrong and disrespectful at every level. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
We can certainly throw up our hands and say O NOES THERE IS NOTHING TO DO. After all, that’s what people did when the printing press made it trivial to reproduce books.
Oh–scratch that. That’s not what they did. Instead they vastly expanded and modified copyright laws to account for the new technology.
We can 100% expand and modify our copyright laws to account for new technology. The only question is whether we’ll have the will to do so.
I have a problem with techbros plagiarizing the dead because they see a way to make money without expending any talent or creating anything original, and so should anyone who creates or enjoys art.
Not if we don’t give them our money. The only reason that parasitic C-suite types keep trying to convince people this is The Way of the Future is to make a quick buck, just like with pivot-to-video, blockchains, NFTs, “the metaverse”, and every other hype train they’ve come up with in the last decade.
Honestly, there is going to be a lot of money lined up against all of the AI deepfakes. That’s how we got copyright law in the first place.
Unlike other situations like home taping and bootlegs, I think the public sympathy is going to be squarely behind the artists. Especially since AI is just a machine, and spinning out billions of deepfakes is going to be no problem at all. Especially when, like this one, they don’t have to be particularly good or accurate.
Another factor is the revulsion many people have to the concept of cloning. Other tech is also advancing and will be used to scrub these attempts as quickly as possible. Given the public sympathy, I can see prison sentences for the perps in the future.
I’m as appalled by this as most of the posters are, which prompted some critical self-reflection.
While many had a very strong reaction to the idea that George Carlin’s work and style could be presented-built on-extended-mimicked by another performer [human or AI], there does not seem to be the same concern for other performance arts. I’d baulk at seeing a modern comedian who basically rewarmed another’s classic routines, but not think twice about seeing someone doing a Night of Neil Young, or a band that pretends to be U2.
Why do we differentiate on modes of art so sharply, when there is a melded space in there occupied by singing comedians and funny musicians [lets say John Cooper Clarke, Flight of the Conchords, Bonzos etc]?
And the easy answer to the legal issues are fair use and licensing deals. The Carlin estate might not agree to such now, but it will almost certainly want to make money off of a dead property someday. And plenty of others will do the same, now and later. I didn’t say that there won’t be attempts to control this, but it will not be sacrosanct.
But that is all still missing the point of just how ubiquitous this will be. How many times on this very board have we posted some ChatGPT result like, “Write a David Allan Coe song about this story,” in just the last year? It won’t be long before you can turn that into a full-fledged simulated performance. Or, just as likely, a George Carlin routine about the COVID-31 pandemic performed by Beyonce in the Colosseum of Rome to their adoring fans Albert Einstein, Blackbeard, and Mickey Mouse with an after party rave DJed by Mozart. In Klingon. And people will make and share these creations regardless of the legalities and how much “true fans” kvetch. The same as they do memes today.
Yell at the clouds all you want, but it won’t stem this tide.