George Carlin Estate Files Lawsuit Against Group Behind AI-Generated Stand-Up Special: ‘A Casual Theft of a Great American Artist’s Work’::George Carlin’s estate has filed a lawsuit against the creators behind an AI-generated comedy special featuring a recreation of the comedian’s voice.
If its wrong to use AI to put genitals in someone’s mouth it should probably be wrong to use AI to put words in their mouth as well.
I agree and I get it’s a funny way to put it, but in this case they started the video with a massive disclaimer that they were not Carlin and that it was AI. So it’s hard to argue they were putting things in his mouth. If anything it’s praiseworthy of a standard when it comes to disclosing if AI was involved, considering the hate mob revealing that attracts.
The internet doesn’t care though. If I make fake pictures of people using their likeness and add a disclaimer, people will just repost it without the disclaimer and it will still do damage. Now whether or not we can or should stop them is another story
Completely true. But we cannot reasonably push the responsibility of the entire internet onto someone when they did their due diligence.
Like, some people post CoD footage to youtube because it looks cool, and someone else either mistakes or malicious takes that and recontextualizes it to being combat footage from active warzones to shock people. Then people start reposting that footage with a fake explanation text on top of it, furthering the misinformation cycle. Do we now blame the people sharing their CoD footage for what other people did with it? Misinformation and propaganda are something society must work together on to combat.
If it really matters, people would be out there warning people that the pictures being posted are fake. In fact, even before AI that’s what happened after tragedy happens. People would post images claiming to be of what happened, only to later be confirmed as being from some other tragedy. Or how some video games have fake leaks because someone rebranded fanmade content as a leak.
Eventually it becomes common knowledge or easy to prove as being fake. Take this picture for instance:
It’s been well documented that the bottom image is fake, and as such anyone can now find out what was covered up. It’s up to society to speak up when the damage is too great.
Ive been thinking about this a lot and if you think about this like they are selling a stolen product then it can be framed differently.
Say I take several MegaMan games, take a copy of all the assets, recombine them into a new MegaMan game called “Unreal Tales of MegaMan”. The game has whole new levels inspired by capcom’s Megaman. Many would argue that the work is transformative.
Am I allowed to sell that MegaMan game? I’m not a legal expert but I think the answer to that would generally be no. My intention here is to mimic a property and profit off of a brand I do not own the rights too.
Generative AI uses samples of original content to create the derivative work to synthesize voices of actors. The creator of this special intention is to make content from a brand that they can solely profit from.
If you used an AI to generate a voice like George Carlin to voice the Reptilian Pope in your videogame, I think you would have a different problem here. I think it’s because they synthesized the voice and then called it George Carlin and sold it as a “New Comedy Special” it begins to fall into the category of Bootleg.
You couldn’t sell that game, even if you created your own assets, because Mega Man is a trademarked character. You could make a game inspired by Mega Man, but if you use any characters or locations from Mega Man, you would be violating their trademark.
AI, celebrity likeness, and trademark is all new territory, and the courts are still sorting out how corporations are allowed to use a celebrities voices and faces without their consent. Last year, Tom Hanks sued a company that used an IA generated version of him for an ad, but I think it’s still in court. How the courts rule on cases like this will probably determine how you can use AI generated voices like in your Reptilian Pope example (though in that case, I’d be more worried about a lawsuit from Futurama).
This lawsuit is a little different though; they’re sidestepping the issue of likeness and claiming that AI is stealing from Carlin’s works themselves, which are under copyright. It’s more similar to the class action lawsuit against Chat GPT, where authors are suing because the chatbot was fed their works to create derivative works without their consent. That case also hasn’t been resolved yet.
Edit: Sorry, I also realized I explained trademark and copyright very poorly. You can’t make a Mega Man game because Mega Man, as a name, is trademarked. You could make a game that has nothing to do with the Mega Man franchise, but if you called it Mega Man you would violate the trademark. The contents of the game (levels, music, and characters) are under copyright. If you used the designs of any of those characters but changed the names, that would violate copyright.
Celebrity likeness is not new territory.
Crispin Glover successfully sued the filmmakers of Back to the Future 2 for using his likeness without permission. Even with dead celebrities, you need permission from their estate in order to use their likeness.
Yes, but it’s new territory in the sense of AI and creative works. If I were to use a photo of Tom Hanks for commercial purposes, that would be clearly stealing his likeness. If I were to create a drawing or painting of Tom Hanks, it becomes a lot less clear cut, and the answer depends on weather my work can be considered, “transformative.”
Many people using AI today are claiming that the works being created are transformative; they’re not using a picture of Tom Hanks, AI is creating a picture of Hanks from existing pictures, just like a painter uses references. This is essentially what the creators of the Carlin special are saying in their disclaimer; this is an AI impression of Carlin, not the real Carlin, and should be treated like any comedian doing an impression.
This is the new territory. I don’t know how the courts will rule, but based on the recent ruling against the Warhol estate, there will be a high bar for what is considered transformative.
Even professional impersonators must pay royalties to the original artist or their estate. The Carlin example seems to me to be impersonation rather than an impression.
Yeah, I’d agree with that. I hope it comes up at trial.
I’ll take Lawyers Maximizing Billable Hours for $500, Alex
Internet: this is awful, of course your inheritors own your own image as stewarts.
Also Internet: I have a right to take pictures of you, your car, your house, or record you without consent. Edit it however I want. Make as much money as I want from the activities and you have no rights. Since if technology allows me to do something you have no expectation that I won’t.
We are demanding that a public figure who is dead have more rights than a private person who is alive.
Im probably out of the loop, or just way too tired to work out what you mean.
Who is the “also internet” part roughly referring to? It reminded me of the sssniperwolf incident, and if i recall, the internet was not happy with that, so it doesn’t make sense to me.
Im also not comfortable with the generalised use of “the internet” because by its very nature saying “the internet” is almost akin to saying “humans”
Every individual member of “the internet” is different and has different views, so pointing out a discrepancy and framing it like it shouldn’t be there is a bit redundant.
Its like saying
Humans: like affordable housing
Also humans: raise interest rates to unaffordable levels.
There are two different groups here that are both humans. So its not particularly useful to group them together with the collective word when trying to point out a disparity.
Just many many times over the years I have seen little pervs on social media brag how they are citizen journalists and have every right to publish any photo that they could physically take. Since no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in their own home.
I’d have sympathy if this was about a grieving family wanting to be left alone, but it looks more like the “estate” wanting money. At least they aren’t going after total nobodies. (Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen)
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It’s kind of like suspension of disbelief. Comes from pro wrestling. It’s a lot like pretending Santa is real when you’re 13 and know it’s not.
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It’s nothing like Carlin.
It’s theft of his work.
Pick one.
I read it like:
Mimic, pace of tone and body language are parts of the work.
That they don’t hit the main part (I.e the humor) is just the icing.
Perhaps I’m top lenient though.
The problem with that is that you can’t protect “pace of tone” and “body language” under law.
Would you say Palworld is copyright infringement?
I’m just saying that I see that those two statements can exists at the same time without a huge mental leap - not that I agree with it - I apologize if I didn’t make that clear enough in the first post!
Do you think a style is IP?
But that would mean having principles instead of profiting off AI hysteria.
It’s hilarious that I’m getting downvoted. 🤣
Why sue? I got through 2 minutes… And the voice was not even close to George Carlin… Like it doesn’t get down his rasp, and sounds like 70s George Carlin
For the same reason that, for example, Kevin Hart would sue someone for releasing an “AI Kevin Hart” album that was a poor imitation of his comedy. It’s appropriating his name and his artistry for publicity. Did the album itself make money? No, because they didn’t charge for it. Did they make a shitload of publicity- thus generating money- for their podcast? You bet they did.
I’ve watched it on YouTube, it’s pretty good. It starts “this is an impersonation of George Carlin”. Wonder if a court ruling would prevent human impersonation.
I agree it’s fucked up, but damn if it isn’t well done and pretty spot on. It’s crazy to hear about recent events from the voice and perspective of George Carlin. The special had me ready to pick up my pitchfork.
I watched the whole thing and it was obviously written by someone and dropped through a text to speech engine (or “AI”).
I do not believe for a second that this was written by AI. AI is getting a lot better at writing, but it still sucks when it comes to humour. It’s great at going from A to B with a typical flow of thought, but it tends to struggle with the reverse, B to A, like a punchline and its setup. Since the court case seems to revolve around not the impersonation aspect but instead the supposed training of the AI on Carlin’s works, it’ll be interesting to find the truth in the matter.
Before I watched it, I thought that it was perhaps sections written by AI and then stitched together afterwards.
After watching it, I think very little of it was actually written by AI, anything that “AI” contributed was thoroughly edited, and that most of it was completely written by a mediocre comedy writer.
There is a 0% chance that anyone typed anything like “Have AI George Carlin perform an hour-long special posthumously” into a computer and it spat that audio out.
There is exactly one bit that I think was even conceivably inspired by interactions with a chat bot and it’s the one about replacing the vowels in people’s names (which is coincidentally what a couple of YouTubers take as “proof” that it was AI generated in whole), and even that bit was likely AI-inspired but not at all AI-written.
EDIT: I wanted to add somewhere that I’m happy to find another skeptic. This seems like a modern “mechanical Turk” to me.
A thing that wouldn’t surprise me at all is if this is some sort of elaborate stunt similar to something Andy Kaufman would do.
It’s a ruse to drive publicity and generate revenue for a podcast. The album itself is free, but this was all about making money.
A person’s voice cannot be copywrited. I hope these people get countersued to oblivion.
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It’s ‘copyrighted.’
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Midler v. Ford Motor Co. , 849 F. 2d 460 (9th Cir. 1988) is a United States Court of Appeals case in which Bette Midler sought remedy against Ford Motor Company for a series of commercials in the 1980s which used a Midler impersonator.
Fucking asshole bot. I never opted in.
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George Carlin was all about lawsuits and money, great way to honor him. /S
I don’t think individuals should own their tone of voice or style. I’ve seen the copyright abuse on YouTube and it would end up with videos being taken down the moment you utter a word with a tone of voice that sounds mildly like a celebrity.
I do believe they should own their name though. Getting sued because you try to pass yourself off as someone else is completely justifiable. This video is coasting off his name, it isn’t exactly right.
As long as it’s presented honestly, I don’t have a problem with this. It’s really no different from:
Or:
Or:
