The late George Carlin is widely regarded as one of the best comedians of all time. And this week, the entertainer—who died in 2008—got an unexpected turn in the public eye with an hour-long YouTube special called George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead.
While some might assume the special consists of highlights from Carlin’s long and illustrious career, it is instead an impersonation generated by something he never had to contend with: artificial intelligence. And it has Carlin’s daughter and many of his fans seething.
The special comes from Dudesy, a self-described “comedy AI” that purportedly directs an eponymous podcast and YouTube show with podcaster Chad Kultgen and Canadian actor and Mad TV alum Will Sasso.
“It really is, to our knowledge, the first podcast that is created by, controlled by and written by, to some degree, an artificial intelligence,” Kultgen told Business in Vancouver earlier this year, while declining to disclose which company programmed Dudesy. “It’s trying to delve into the question of: Can AIs be creative? Can they do comedy work? Can they do creative work? And I think, at least on our show, the answer is obviously yes.”
Plenty of Carlin fans beg to differ. His daughter, Kelly Carlin, quickly condemned the special, writing on X on Wednesday:
“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…if you want to listen to the genuine George Carlin, he has 14 specials that you can find anywhere.”
In the video, Dudesy is explicit that the special isn’t the real thing: “I just want to let you know very clearly that what you’re about to hear is not George Carlin,” it says. “It’s my impersonation of George Carlin that I developed in the exact same way a human impressionist would. 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.”
But that comparison to a couple of comedy greats was far too flattering to Chicago Sun-Times film critic Richard Roeper, who wrote on X: “No. It’s nothing like that. F*** all the way off, Dudesy.”
One user replied: “I listened to 10 minutes, and it sounds like what Carlin would sound like if you kidnapped his family and said, ‘Be funny to save their lives!’”
Another asked whether Dudesy can be sued by the Carlin estate, adding that it “seems illegal to just…poach someone from beyond the grave like that.”
In fact, Dudesy produced an earlier special in which it impersonated Tom Brady, but removed it after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the NFL legend’s lawyers.
For Kelly Carlin, Dudesy has “stepped over a line in the world of comedy today that will surely affect dead artists and their estates now.”
She also warned others, “They’re coming for you next,” tagging Zelda Williams (daughter of the late actor and comedian Robin Williams), Melissa Rivers (daughter of comedian Joan Rivers), and the late Garry Shandling, whose X account was turned over to fans, with his estate’s approval, to share material from his body of work.
Kaia Alexander, host of the Hollywood Wolfpack podcast, responded to Carlin on X, writing: “Absolutely chilling. And it’s wrong. It’s wrong to steal the likeness of a person, without their estate’s permission, and against the wishes of their own children.”
Generative AI tools, of which OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the most popular, are spurring legal questions—and lawsuits—about the extent to which they’re allowed to use copyrighted work. Last month, the New York Times sued OpenAI and its biggest investor, Microsoft, alleging its copyrighted articles were used to train ChatGPT. In a similar lawsuit, visual artists have gone after Stability AI, Midjourney, and others for allegedly misusing their work to train AI systems. Getty Images has also sued Stability AI for “brazen infringement” of its intellectual property “on a staggering scale.”
In a follow-up post, Kelly Carlin indicated that the Carlin estate never gave Dudesy permission to use Carlin’s works, and she replied with “yup” to another X user, who wrote: “They wanted to make money off his brand, not do the hard work of developing their own subversive, onstage comedy persona.”
Still, not everyone agreed with Kelly Carlin’s take. One X user said: “Art is art. You’re simply caught in a greedy mindset…when not realizing this will simply bring more eyes to your dad.”
She replied: “I’m worried about his legacy. His reputation. His art. I’m allowed to do that as his daughter and while I’m alive.”
