George Carlin's Estate Sues Podcasters Over AI Delivery
The estate of comedian George Carlin sued the makers of a podcast on Thursday after they claimed they used artificial intelligence to impersonate Carlin for a comedy special.
The lawsuit was filed against Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen, hosts of the podcast “Dudesy,” who said they infringed on the estate's copyrights by training an AI algorithm on five decades of Carlin's work for “George Carlin: I'm glad I'm dead“, which was posted to the podcast's YouTube channel, where it still remains. The lawsuit also says they illegally used Carlin's name and likeness.
The lawsuit calls on a judge to prevent “Dudesy” — who advertises itself on social media as “AI, Podcast, YouTube show” — from using Carlin's copyrighted works in the future and to require the podcast to destroys the audio and video of the episode.
Danielle Del, a spokeswoman for Sasso, said Dudesy is not actually an AI
“It is a fictional podcast character created by two people, Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen,” Del wrote in an email. “The 'I'm Glad I'm Dead' YouTube video was written entirely by Chad Kultgen.”
A spokesperson for Kultgen did not respond to a request for comment. Del declined to comment on whether the Carlin-sounding voice was AI-generated
Josh Schiller, an attorney for the Carlin estate, said the lawsuit filed in California Federal District Court would proceed despite the podcast's pushback on the AI claims.
“We don't know if what they are saying is true,” he said. “What we will know is that they will be impeached. They will produce documents and there will be evidence that somehow shows how the show came together.
The lawsuit is part of a troubled legal debate over whether training AI language learning models on publicly available written, visual and audio content infringes the copyrights of artists and authors.
In July, comedian Sarah Silverman joined a class action lawsuit against OpenAI and another against Meta, accusing the companies of copyright infringement by using her work to train their AI models. A group of prominent novelists, including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen and Elin Hilderbrand, filed a similar lawsuit against OpenAI in September. In December, The New York Times also filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI and Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, of copyright infringement.
Carlin's daughter, Kelly, denounced the 'Dudesy' special.
“It is a poorly executed facsimile, put together by unscrupulous individuals to capitalize on the extraordinary goodwill my father has built with his adoring fan base,” she wrote in a statement.
“George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead” begins with a voice saying, “Hi, my name is Dudesy and I'm a comedy AI.” It continues: “I just want you to know. It's clear that what you're about to hear is not George Carlin. It is my impersonation of George Carlin that I have developed in exactly the same way as a human impressionist.”
“I have listened to all of George Carlin's material and have done my best to imitate his voice, cadence and posture, as well as the topic that I think would have interested him today,” the voice continues, before another voice sounds as if Carlin on current events including homelessness, the police, mass shootings and artificial intelligence.