By Gary Symons
TLL Editor in Chief
The estate of George Carlin won a settlement with a media company over a fake, hour-long comedy special, purportedly using AI to portray the comedian.
As TLL first reported in January, the estate filed a federal lawsuit against the comedy podcast Dudesy for an hour-long comedy special sold as an AI-generated impression of the late comedian. Ironically, once the lawsuit was filed, a representative for one of the podcast hosts admitted it was actually written by a human.
The lawsuit was filed by Carlin’s manager, Jerold Hamza, in a California district court, and claims the special, “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead presents itself as being created by an AI trained on decades worth of Carlin’s material.
That training would, by definition, involve making “unauthorized copies” of “Carlin’s original, copyrighted routines” without permission in order “to fabricate a semblance of Carlin’s voice and generate a Carlin stand-up comedy routine,” according to the lawsuit.
“Defendants’ AI-generated ‘George Carlin Special’ is not a creative work,” the lawsuit reads, in part. “It is a piece of computer-generated click-bait which detracts from the value of Carlin’s comedic works and harms his reputation. It is a casual theft of a great American artist’s work.”
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In the settlement agreement filed with a federal court Monday, the podcast outlet Dudesy agreed to permanently take down the special and to refrain from using Carlin’s image voice or likeness in the future without the express written approval of the estate.
The settlement meets the central demands laid out by the Carlin estate in the lawsuit filed on Jan. 25.
“I am grateful that the defendants acted responsibly by swiftly removing the video they made,” Carlin’s daughter Kelly Carlin said in a statement. “While it is a shame that this happened at all, I hope this case serves as a warning about the dangers posed by AI technologies and the need for appropriate safeguards not just for artists and creatives, but every human on earth.”
George Carlin, among the most influential standup comedians of the 20th century, died in 2008.
In the audio special, titled “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” a synthesis of the comic delivers commentary on current events. A companion Dudesy podcast episode with hosts Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen—the company and the two men are the defendants in the lawsuit—was released with the men playing clips and commenting on them.
The Carlin lawsuit is among several filed over the past year to combat the unlicensed use of celebrity likenesses, particularly those involving the use of AI-generated images, video, music and voiceovers.
Joshua Schiller, who represented the Carlin estate, says the settlement is a blueprint and precedent for resolving similar disputes over AI-generated likenesses in the future. “Our goal was to resolve this case expeditiously and have the offending videos removed from the internet so that we could preserve Mr. Carlin’s legacy and shine a light on the reputational and intellectual property threat caused by this emerging technology,” Schiller said.
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