Suit alleges copyright infringement and illegal use of Carlin's name and likeness.
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George Carlin’s heirs sue comedy podcast over “AI-generated” impression
- Thread starter JournalBot
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You come across as the kind of person who likes the smell of their own farts.How you think it's going:
How it's actually going:
It's curious how some prefer to gallop around the actual debate, neighing distractions rather than engaging with actual arguments.
The roundabout of repetitive retorts in this discussion does more to inspire yawns than thought-provoking dialogue.
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train_wreck
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Hammer needs to come down on this dude for sure, it’s gone way past trolling at this point.
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It's not ai. It's a lie, using AI to advance the progress of theft of idea, comedic genius, and name recognition. Defending this is tantamount to defending outright theft of every intellectual property idea possible because you think AI coming up with it after a human came up with it is valid....even if ai was never used and you are just pretending it was. You are using multiple ridiculous ideas together to justify the other ridiculous ideas which just makes them extra ridiculous but harder to follow so you are acting like they are valid.
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its a federal lawsuit in California and California does have publicity rights. At least publicity rights lapse faster than copyright. Considering I have seen Shakespeare played in a number of shows. I had a brief thought about someone trying to do a show about Mickey Mouse and using portraying Walt Disney for his thoughts but being unable do it. Technically I dont think you can for 12 more years, Walt died in 1966.
I dont think the ai issue matters, publicity rights dont care if a ai or human copied and used the right.
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Of all places, Indiana has some of the strictest publicity rights in the US, covering not only likeness, but stuff like their signature, gestures and mannerisms for 100 years after death. Tennessee is pretty strict as well, with the same length but lesser coverage, but Nashville is a big deal in the music industry so it makes some sense.
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Are the Dudesy guys in Indiana?
On the parody issue I would think they would have better luck if they had stated it was a parody and not oh we have used a ai to copy carlin. Not oh you didn't understand our whole schtick was a parody, pretty please its fair use.
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Ive always said if its infringement when done by a human then its infringement when done by a human with a computer, and also the opposite is true.
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Nope. It'll just force those who want to use AI to make such things, to do it entirely anonymously.
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Yes you could, provided John Steinbeck's photo was not copyrighted -in which case you'd need to license it- and Steinbeck's name was not trademarked by his heirs or by whatever foundation manages his works.
Star Trek derivative works, provided they do not use copyrighted storylines, face a similar hurdle. The Star Trek name, and I'd guess most of its characters, are not copyrighted but they are trademarked.
Titles and character names are trademarked, while stories, photos, cinematic content, ship designs etc are copyrighted. Trademarks, unlike copyrights, do not expire as long as they are renewed.
Since in this case the lawyers of Carlin's heirs did not claim a trademark violation I'd assume Carlin's name is not trademarked (as a personal brand). I'm not sure if 'likeness' can be trademarked, but it certainly cannot be copyrighted.
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That is not how this works. Unless you are somehow making material gain from the copy on your hard drive, or possibly circulating it, depending on the outcome of the case.I can't wait for him to come into the houses of people to destroy the copies those random people have on their have drives.
Besides what you said was just plain… never mind. Useless.
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DeschutesCore
Ars Scholae Palatinae
You guys said the same shit about crypto. Can you honesty identify anyone that is running home mining rigs any longer while competing with corporations that bought up hydroelectric dams and solar farms?
You guys said the same shit about gene editing at home.
You guys said the same shit about flying cars.
You guys said the same shit about Hydrogen Fuels Cells.
The list is endless, and you speaking as if we MUST act based on YOUR clearly bad observations is laughable.
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DeschutesCore
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I started watching Loudermilk, discovered he was in it, and turned it off.
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It's hilarious to see all of the defenses of AI in this thread when it has now turned out that, as I predicted, they're fessing up to say that the whole AI written comedy podcast thing was "a bit" and a human actually did the work. It's not going to save them from the name and likeness rights problems, but they'll at least be able to avoid some of the copyright issues.
Though if they used recordings of Carlin to train an synthesized voice without permission they're not going to avoid them all. It will be hilarious to me if it turns out that they'd hired someone to do a Carlin impression instead. At least it would avoid the copyright claims.
Though if they used recordings of Carlin to train an synthesized voice without permission they're not going to avoid them all. It will be hilarious to me if it turns out that they'd hired someone to do a Carlin impression instead. At least it would avoid the copyright claims.
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You do know there are such things as unauthorized biographies right? Just checking.
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Likeness is protected by the right of publicity which (in the United States) is governed by state law (and is involved in this lawsuit as mentioned in TFA under the "Names and Likeness" section). This is an issue that also impacts the NCAA football video games series, as the developers have apparently just negotiated a deal for these rights from athletes.
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And they usually use the word "Unauthorized" very prominently in their marketing (often even in the title), just to make sure there's no confusion over whether it's authorized by the person (or their estate).
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Scary Devil Monastery
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Sadly, that's the truth. This OP is about an hour long presentation of an AI trained to sound like George Carlin and which does so while being slightly, but noticeably off.
Tomorrow's OP will be about russians and republicans crafting similar disinformation on social media in order to make it look like their political and military adversaries are monsters, clowns, or both.
And you just know that the third of the US voting population which went all-in on Covid parties and Ivermectin to prove their loyalty to Dear Leader are going to eat that shit up.
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IncorrigibleTroll
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
I'm not sure that crowd really needs gAI to buy into nonsense. They want to believe, so a crudely scribbled napkin is likely sufficient evidence.
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Yeah, the iconic (alas) dumb surprised face on a Youtube thumbnail is a good indicator that I can block the channel and never watch any of the shit they do.
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IncorrigibleTroll
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
So you're saying you really only listen to music or watch clips of TV shows on Youtube? Because that dumb surprised face is omnipresent. Honestly, it should really be the Youtube logo at this point.
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Scary Devil Monastery
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Myeah, I've always felt that 'copyright' is already skeevy enough the last thing we want to do is extend it into further venues. The fact that fair use has specific mention of parody in many jurisdictions makes this a few more layers of complex - and honestly? I don't think we want to open the door on a possible future where satire, no matter how edgy or crude, gets to be the subject of every hungry copyright troll.
Trademark violation, though, is a shoe-in. This isn't so much about mimicking Carlin's style as it is an attempt to profit from his name.
There almost has to be any number of trademark suits around about this in living history, impersonators having been a branch of the acting/comedy profession since we invented fire. Surely there's some precedent there to be had for cases like this?
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It's mostly Stephanie Sterling, Yong Yea and some local creators that are not dumb
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IncorrigibleTroll
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
It's mostly Stephanie Sterling, Yong Yea and some local creators that are not dumb
A friend of mine has a little niche channel about 90s/00s drum & bass records. He hates the stupid face thumbnails. But the viewer numbers don't lie: his videos do markedly better with a stupid face thumbnail than without.
I don't think we can put much of the blame for this on the youtube creators. They're only responding to the behavior of the viewers as deduced by the Great and All-Knowing Algorithm.
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Scary Devil Monastery
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Of course. Now consider the future where you want to find a given youtube clip of 'politician A' who said something worth hearing but, since that spiel was about gun control the NRA has flooded youtube with bit reels where he advocates the use of baby blood for rejuvenation, or confesses to being aroused by young children, et cetera.
Not to mention all the flicks we can expect where some person conspicuously identifiable as part of a given minority group, 'accidentally' spills the story of their organized part in, oh, grooming, Great Replacement, kidnapping white women...you get it.
What AI can do is to flood the market with bullshit you can't separate from the real quickly. Maybe that'll just screw youtube over, but at least for a time I predict we'll be seeing a whole lot of shit like this.
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Fair use, as has been pointed out to me by every lawyer I know and most lawyers I read online, is what's known as an affirmative defense. It doesn't stop you from getting sued, it is something you can use in court to avoid being found in violation of someone else's copyright. So if they want to make a parody defense they'd still likely have to go to court to fight it. And the courts haven't always found in favor of parodies.
And if they really had used an AI there's a chance their parody defense would have been shot down. Because the parody protection is explicitly in there to protect human creative endeavors and, well, if an LLM made it it's not a human creative endeavor. It's not even really a creative endeavor - what the LLM would produce would be more of an average of the work it's fed in training. There's a strong argument to be made that parody of that kind shouldn't actually be protected because it's not being used for anything but purely to derive a commercial gain off the work of the original creator (and I've been told that historically courts have frowned on that aspect of the parody defense).
(And that's before we get to the copyright questions swirling around using data under someone else's copyright to train your model and whether that counts as fair use. Despite what a lot of folks in my field want to believe, the legal and ethical answers to that question are not decided and not clear cut.)
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IncorrigibleTroll
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
I very much suspect that the opposite scenario is far more likely, at least longer term. You can really only dupe most people with generated imagery a couple of times at most. I think it's more likely that people will stop trusting in any imagery than it is that people can be fooled repeatedly by generated imagery. We've been seeing that on a small scale for years now, where people will argue that a particular image is photoshopped if it's unfavorable to their position. Generative AI increases the speed and scale of an existing phenomenon (convincingly altered images), so I expect it will likewise increase the scale of the existing reaction to that phenomenon.
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I get the temptation not to let a troll get away with trolling, but every quote surfaces the message. I recommend ignoring and/or downvoting.
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It could be that, or it could be that it's two comedians and comedy is already an incredibly competitive field even outside of podcasts. Trying to find new jokes isn't easy and the "what if an AI made a podcast" is actually something that could bring some humor if it was done right.
Comedians are always pushing boundaries. Sometimes they manage to do it in a way that is amazing. Most often it's just kind of "meh." But every once in a while one of them will do something so offensive and also unfunny with their boundary pushing their unfunniness makes the news. That's exactly what these guys have done - done something so unfunny and also offensive that it made the news.
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IncorrigibleTroll
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Whatever else one might say about Kamus, he's clearly a true-believer. He isn't trolling, he's evangelizing.
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While your view reflects caution, it seems to miss the broader historical trend of technological democratization. Take computers for example: once colossal machines exclusive to corporations and governments, they now sit in our homes. The internet, initially a government project, has become a global village accessible by pretty much everyone (consider the fact that a kid in Africa, has access to far more information than Bill Clinton did when he was president). Cell phones, which then became smartphones, once a luxury, are now ubiquitous, revolutionizing communication and access to information.
Regarding hydrogen fuel cells, I share your skepticism. My belief leans towards technologies like PVs and batteries, whose costs have drastically reduced, benefiting everyone. The takeaway here is that despite corporate involvement in these technologies, it's the everyday user who reaps the benefits. This conversation itself is a testament to that – we're using devices and networks that were once out of reach for the average person. (it really takes an incredibly pessimistic view of the world to not see this as you were drafting your response, without giving a second thought to how impossible this would have been just a few decades ago)
And when it comes to AI, it is advancing at a staggering pace, far outstripping the rates we saw even during the heydays of Moore's Law. This isn't just about raw computing power becoming cheaper; it's about the entire ecosystem of AI – from data accessibility and storage to algorithmic efficiency and open-source contributions – all converging to make AI faster, smarter, and more accessible.
People sharing your views (which seems to be just about everyone except for me and another person in this thread) couldn't have picked a worst time to have the views of a luddite. All of these technologies are converging as we speak, and the marginal costs for these technologies are trending towards zero.
So is that what you guys have been all along? Sealions? Go back to any of the threads where I talked about Bitcoin or EVs from a few years ago, and see who the people endlessly requesting evidence are. With the end goal that if failed to produce the evidence you requested you would have found some kind of 'gotcha' moment, and it would mean you've won the argument.
I might just have to go look at some of those threads right now, because a lot of you were as nasty as it can be, and had the most absurd requests I've ever seen in an argument.
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I feel you, but there are channels I've watched that predate that Mr Beast face. Seeing that face everywhere along with the alt-color text with BS attention-grabbing words is really turning me off to the entire platform. It's like the worst practices of Buzzfeed and Taboola didn't go away. They just got put into a box for a little while.
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No they made the news because they claimed that they used a brand new technology to create a special by a dead comic without human intervention. It was the act of using the AI to resurrect dead comics without their permission that freaked people out. No one would be talking about this if they wrote a special in the style of Carlin and hired an impersonator to perform it since the special itself isn't anywhere near Carlin quality content wise, it's just a really good impression.
People got offended because the world is full of reactionary idiots who think they need to protect a dead millionaire celebrity. Same as the idiots who got upset with the very clearly fake AI Taylor Swift porn. These idiots threw gas on the fire which caused a Streisand Effect and got more people talking. If they would have ignored it like every other Photoshopped adult image or crappy impression no one would have cared.
It's pretty obvious that you haven't watched the special since there's nothing boundary pushing or overly offensive in it. It's just a clone of Carlin's voice and style and it sounds like everything else that he's done. Honesty it doesn't even sound that much like him beyond the AI voice if you listen to the material and it's really just an hour of the same subjects that everyone has beaten into the ground for the last 4 years. The last 3rd in particular really felt like it was written by a human, not AI.
Honestly there's no point in talking about this anymore. We know that they lied and wrote the script themselves and they easily could have just hired a Carlin impersonator to read it. The whole thing is a farce and they now deserve all the hate they get for pulling this stupid con. The only value here was them using AI to generate the special and now that that's gone this has no more value than any other bit from a hack impression comic. I don't know why these two would put their entire career on the line for a stunt like this but hey AI fever is hot and you gotta cash those checks.
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As opposed to people like you who never chose to get the skills to actually create art? People who want to make it completely unviable to make a living creating art, meaning the rest of us have nothing but your shitty, derivative, AI crap?
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Snarky Robot
Ars Legatus Legionis
Buying WHAT?
Because if you buy digital content, you’re only buying the rights specifically agreed upon in the contract you agreed to. If you bought a CD, first sale doctrine applies to the physical products, not the right to make copies of the contents (e.g., ripping it to add it to your training data).
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