'No machine will ever replace his genius': The daughter of late comedian George Carlin speaks out against a ghoulish AI-generated comedy special, which was likely edited by real people anyway

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(Image credit: Dudesy on YouTube.)

An image of a ghoulishly-prompted AI generated artwork of late comedian George Carlin.

Earlier this week, a new special from stand-up comedian George Carlin was posted to YouTube—which is concerning, seeing as he died in 2008.

Marketing itself as a “first of its kind media experiment”, the show follows Canadian comedian and impressionist Will Sasso and podcaster Chad Kultgen as they’re made to host podcasts where Dudesy is the producer with an iron fist. As thewebsitereads:

“Our hosts have been convinced to grant the Dudesy AI access to all of their personal emails, text messages, social media accounts, purchases, and browsing histories so that it can tailor the show to their specific personalities and entertain you at the highest level possible. Every episode is an experiment that generates data that will be used to make the next episode even better! Eventually Dudesy will be perfect and so will you.”

If you’re familiar with Harlan Ellison’s chilling work of sci-fi horror fiction I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, it’s sort of like that. Except AM’s trying to make the perfect podcast rather than turning its victims into shambling flesh blobs. You can decide which is the more effective form of torture.

The comedy special in question, however, drew widespread ire from the internet at-large, including from George Carlin’s daughter Kelly Carlin—who took to Twitter to denounce it in no uncertain terms.

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(Image credit: @kelly_carlin on Twitter/X.)

A post that reads: “My statement regarding the AI generated George Carlin special: My dad spent a lifetime perfecting his craft from his very human life, brain and imagination. No machine will ever replace his genius. These AI generated products are clever attempts at trying to recreate a mind…1/3”

“No machine will ever replace his genius,” Kelly Carlin writes. “Let’s let the artist’s work speak for itself. Humans are so afraid of the void that we can’t let what has fallen into it stay there … if you want to listen to the genuine George Carlin, he has 14 specials that you can find anywhere.” In a different tweet,Kelly Carlin clarifiedthat there was “zero permission granted.”

The likely lies of Dudesy the robot

(Image credit: Cyberdreams / Nightdive Studios)

Art created for “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, a game based off a book by Harlan Ellison.

The special itself is an off-putting slurry of Carlin-esque jokes set to AI-generated stills tangentially related to the subject matter—which takes away the physical side of comedy, obviously. A lot of stand-up jokes are sold through expression, and you get none of Carlin’s surly-old-man energy here.

The video churns through controversial subject matters to canned laughter, and while the jokes are less nonsensical than one might expect, whether the special is good or not is besides the point.

While Dudesy maintains it’s “doing my best George Carlin impersonation just like a human being would”,AI as it stands doesn’t have human intent. It’s very good at looking like it does, but the algorithm isn’t actually making any decisions related to the creation of its work—it’s a program, trained on a dataset, which then makes educated guesses on that dataset.

Language programs are just guessing the next most likely word in a sentence, which often leads to ‘hallucinations’. Here’s a fun example of ChatGPT completelyinventing a false article from the New York Times:

“ChatGPT doesn’t just get things wrong at times, it can fabricate information. Names and dates. Medical explanations. The plots of books. Internet addresses. Even historical events that never happened.” The technology’s impressive, but it’s not omniscient—it’s not even thinking in any real sense of the word.

(Image credit: Dudesy on YouTube.)

An AI-generated image of a mad scientist with flowing godly hair inventing cancer, as per the George Carlin AI special posted to Dudesy’s youtube channel.

Dudesy would like you to think it’s a bespoke AI showrunner, but I’d be shocked if it’s even in-house. Even if we buy into that fantasy, even if we think Dudesy is some unique creation breaking new ground—are we assuming a revolutionary advancement like that would be first used forpodcasting,here?

To engage in party pooper behaviour for just a second: the fantasy of Dudesy is so massively removed from any likely reality, it’s staggering that its hosts are playing along in the first place. It is incredibly unlikely that an AI is sufficiently advanced enough to write, edit, and upload a video autonomously. Humans almost definitely edited that special somewhere.

I want to hammer home that I do think an AI was used to create the script, images, and voiceover: but it’s a near-certainty that someone had to prompt, edit, and cut all of that together to make it cohesive.

Isn’t it sad that we made the torment nexus?

(Image credit: Dudesy on YouTube.)

An image of the podcast Dudesy where they discuss the implications behind an AI-Generated George Carlin stand-up special.

One could make the argument that the podcast is using videos like the fake Carlin special to discuss AI’s implications in a constructive way—but to quote actual flesh-and-blood comedianBo Burnham: “Self awareness does not absolve anybody of anything.” You can’t just invent thetorment nexusand then say ‘but we’re talking about the implications of the torment nexus’, you stillmadethe torment nexus.

It’s telling that I’m nearing 1,000 words here and I still haven’t talked about how this whole thing’s an ethical minefield, or the sinking feeling of an AI-generated video harvesting the beloved work of a dead comedian. Impressionism and satire are both crucially protected speech. Even so, something doesn’t have to be against the law for it to be wrong or rightfully criticised, and this whole act of speculative techno-necromancy is exhausting enough.

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