Posted in: TV | Tagged: ai, artificial intelligence, Dudesy, george carlin, Kelly Carlin, will sasso

Kelly Carlin Dismisses AI George Carlin: Can't "Replace His Genius"

An AI-generated George Carlin standup special was released 15 years after the comedian's passing and daughter Kelly Carlin isn't laughing.

It was inevitable how far down the rabbit hole artificial intelligence has gone, not to mention one of the biggest sticking points of the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the role of AI in creative media from writing and performing. Dudesy, a comedy AI that hosts a podcast and a YouTube show with Mad TV alum Will Sasso and podcaster Chad Kutlgen produced an hour-long George Carlin special called George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead, 15 years after the comedian's passing in 2008.

"I just want to let you know very clearly that what you're about to hear is not George Carlin. It's my impersonation of George Carlin that I developed in the exact same way a human impressionist would," Dudesy said at the beginning. "I listened to all of George Carlin's material and did my best to imitate his voice, cadence, and attitude as well as the subject matter I think would have interested him today. So think of it like Andy Kaufman impersonating Elvis or like Will Ferrell impersonating George W. Bush." With a career spanning five decades, Carlin came up in the 1950s entertaining audiences on television, taking the occasional acting gigs before becoming the counterculture comedian we know today, tackling conventions, language, and politics. His famous "Seven Dirty Words" routine became the subject of a landmark Supreme Court case in Pacifica v FCC. All of Carlin's comedy specials were hosted on HBO until his final one in 2008's It's Bad for Ya shortly before his death. The AI special attempts to tackle a variety of subjects, including being self-aware of what many view as a major concern of the platform.

"There's one line of work that is most threatened by AI — one job that is most likely to be completely erased because of artificial intelligence: stand-up comedy," AI-generated Carlin said. "I know what all the stand-up comics across the globe are saying right now: 'I'm an artist, and my art form is too creative, too nuanced, too subtle to be replicated by a machine. No computer program can tell a fart joke as good as me.'" The special contains references to billionaires, including Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg.

Not amused is George's daughter, Kelly Carlin, who's also a writer, host, and performer like her father, writing on social media, "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 that will never exist again," she wrote. "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. Here's an idea, how about we give some actual living human comedians a listen to? But if you want to listen to the genuine George Carlin, he has 14 specials that you can find anywhere." What would George say about this? Not a goddamn thing – because he's fucking dead. We think Carlin would appreciate that…

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