George Carlin‘s estate has settled a lawsuit over an AI-generated imitation of the late comedian, with the creators agreeing to remove it from their YouTube channel and podcast feed.
In January, the Dudesy podcast released “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” which purported to be an hour-long special created by artificial intelligence. Carlin died in 2008, but the special featured a sound-alike voice doing Carlin-esque material on contemporary topics like trans rights and defunding the police.
The estate sued, alleging that the special violated the estate’s copyrights and its publicity right to Carlin’s name, image and likeness.
This was quite obviously a parody which is protected speech in the US. There is no ambiguity on this, the creation was not some pure AI generation, it was output based on the parameters set by the Dudesy guys, one of whom is well known comedian Will Sasso of MadTV fame.
The anti-AI circlejerk crowd is leaning hard on the wrong example to attack, and the Carlin family has this all wrong.
People don’t seem interested in thinkng beyond a knee jerk reaction against anything labeled AI.