George Carlin Estate Files Lawsuit Against Group Behind AI-Generated Stand-Up Special: ‘A Casual Theft of a Great American Artist’s Work’::George Carlin’s estate has filed a lawsuit against the creators behind an AI-generated comedy special featuring a recreation of the comedian’s voice.
Well put.
Eh…. I don’t know that I can agree with this.
I understand the intent behind it, but this specific instance is legitimately in parallel with impersonators, or satire. Hear me out.
They are impersonating his voice, using new content in his style, and make no claim to be legitimate.
So this comes down to “this is in bad taste” which, while I can understand and might even agree with… isn’t illegal.
The only novel concept in this, is that “scary tech” was used. There was no fraud, there was no IP violation, and no defamation. Where is the legal standing?
They trained the AI on his material. That’s theft of IP without a license or agreement.
They didn’t write satire in his style, they sampled his actual work with a machine. It’s not a parody of George Carlin, it’s an inferior approximation of him.
I didn’t say this was satire, I said it was in line with satire on a legal front. And why did you ignore the “impersonator” line immediately before it and jump straight into parody?
They sampled his work, yes. To get voice, pacing, image, etc. they didn’t then have it spit out copies, or even remixes of his previous work, they had it create new content and made it clear it was not him.
I don’t see this as any different than an impersonator watching hundreds of hours of his routines, getting into character visually and verbally, and walking out on stage to do their own routine.
In fact, let me just ask directly: would you be taking issue with this if it was a real human, no AI involved, who had dressed and trained to move and sound approximately like the man, and then filmed it and put it online? Would you say that is illegal?
It is not in any way in line with Satire. They sampled his work with a machine.
If a real human did this, no AI involved, then that human’s interpretation of Carlin’s mannerisms, speech patterns, and humor would all be much more varied than if that human remixed Carlin’s own words and copied his own imagery.
Plus, if somebody came out on stage and started calling themselves Stephen Colbert or Larry the Cable Guy, then guess what? That’s fucking illegal.
Oh good, you understood what I said.
Tell me you’ve never seen a high quality impersonator without telling me you’ve never seen a high quality impersonator. 🤦🏻♂️
No, it really isn’t. Why would it be? Is Carlin a law enforcement officer? Is there an attempt to commit fraud I missed in the middle? What law do you think impersonating a random person breaks?
Not to mention, the title description and opening line make it pretty obvious this isn’t Carlin.
I also noticed a lot of skirting around my question with a distinct lack of a direct answer. So I’ll ask it again: If that was a human who put out the exact same video, and AI was not involved, would you have a problem with it? Because it really seems like you wouldn’t.
You said:
And FYI, Stephen Colbert got a Cease and Desist notice for being Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report when he left the Viacom network for CBS. Because that is how intellectual properties work, when you make money off of your character or your image then it is your property: that is also the basis for which public figures and actors can refuse images or artworks being used for monetary gain outside of fair use or depictions of public settings.
Wouldn’t the issue there be the fact that “of the Colbert Report” is using the actual name of the show in a way that would create profit for him? This, profiting off of someone else’s IP? It’s not the fact that he is “Stephen Colbert”. It’s the part that isn’t his name.
No, actually, they tried to claim ownership over the satirical character Stephen Colbert. I really love how he responded to it, btw, here is a clip TLDR: he brought on Stephen Colbert’s identical twin cousin Stephen Colbert, completely unrelated to the Colbert Report show and characters.
I teared up listening to this special. It was like he was still alive. A lot of good material and definitely in his spirit. People who want to lock up our culture behind paywalls can get bent.
No don’t you understand. If we don’t enforce copyright laws we won’t get a 19th Fast and the Furious movie.
“That use AI to violate the law”
Watch out impressionists. If you get too good you might become a lawbreaker. The AI hysteria is beyond absurd.
That’s not what this is about though.
AI should follow the standard norms and conventions we’ve established up to this point. Which, generally speaking, would prohibit using someone’s likeness without their consent to make a profit, and also not using the likeness of a well loved, dead man, in such a trashy way.
You know, basic human decency.
“using someone’s likeness”
Again, so someone can’t do a gilbert gottfried impression while doing their own stand-up? That’s illegal to do because their voice itself is copyright protected? Man, all these AI covers on Youtube are fucked then.
You completely misunderstand the law to appeal to emotion which continues to feed into the hysteria around generative AI. Photoshop isn’t illegal, generative AI isn’t illegal, doing impressions isn’t illegal. This would be no different if someone took that same script and did their best George Carlin impression.
Building those isn’t illegal. Using them to make a profit without consent is. The law is very clear here. This is what is at issue here.
Right so every single song, every use of Frank Sinatra’s voice on YouTube to cover songs is wildly illegal, yes? They have ads, they’re doing it for profit. The people who made the special didn’t sell access to it so how’d they make money? Same way I’d imagine.
those the use ai for it, yes actually. in fact, if we’re following the letter of copyright law, almost every meme is technically illegal.
This is the best argument I have ever heard for getting rid of copyright law. It can’t be followed even if you want to.
yeah, that’s exactly the point i was trying to get at. it’s all fucked already anyway…
This is the concise way of putting it that I’ve been missing.
Using AI to do something that actually intelligent beings already legally do, like impressions and parody (with disclaimers and all that), isn’t suddenly theft or stealing because AI was used in the process. I’m really disappointed in the Lemmy community for buying into all this bs
Impressionists have nothing to do with this.
If I scraped all Beyonce’s videos, cut it up and join it into another video, and called it “Beyonce: resurrected”, I’m not doing am impression. I’m stealing someone’s work and likeness for commercial purposes.
Are you sad that your garbage generator is just a plagiarism machine?
You’re understimating what generative AI can do. I was shocked when I realized that GPT-3 was able to do creative writing, something that we thought would be out of reach after things like doing management and self driving cars. Turns out, creativity is what AI can actually do. Watch the video. This is like George Carlin but not using any of his material, instead creating something completely new in the style of George Carlin. They could have used the style and a slightly different voice, but they wanted to make a point here.
If your argument is that minds, be they artificial or human, are not allowed to learn from other peoples works then… well then that is a very immoral argument to make imho.
If you think that LLM has a “mind”, there’s no discussion with you, sorry.
That’s not what I’m saying, What we currently have is more like the disembodied creative writing center of a brain, without memory or conscience but able to do creative writing. But it seems pretty clear now that we will have sentient artificial minds sooner than later.
And the last thing we need is to use intellectual “property” arguments to regulate this.
Actually cutting it up into another video makes it transformative and it’s protected under the DMCA. Thank you for proving you don’t know what you’re talking about. Take care.
Sure mate. You try selling a copy of it.
Likewise. You’re either too dumb or stubborn to even google what “transformative work” is.
Typical “AI” techbro.
Sold for 71 million. Which if that were people would be more than the UK.
Your comment reads like ChatGPT generated garbage.