303
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
303 points (93.9% liked)
News
36569 readers
552 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I don't care about the technology. I don't even care if it's funny. It's in terrible taste.
If you have a funny standup set, do your routine yourself. If you want funny topical comedy, there are literally dozens of comedians alive today you can watch right now on multiple streaming services and YouTube.
There is no reason to do this other than to be tasteless.
I don't believe in blasphemy, but if I did, putting words in the mouth of an incredibly insightful genius and presenting it as his words would be blasphemy.
If Carlin himself approved it before dying, I might listen to it. But nope. You said it yourself. Plenty of living talent right now.
They should have done this with the last Norm MacDonald special that he recorded during the pandemic. Use the same words, but put him in front of an audience.
Greed?
I'd call greed being tasteless, but I guess we could count it as a second reason.
Well they aren't trying to pass this off as Carlin's material. The video starts and ends with a disclaimer saying that it's an AI generated impersonation.
What if this set was entirely written and performed by a human but in the style of George Carlin? Is that as tasteless?
A little, but not as much as if they were pretending to be George Carlin. I don't think a disclaimer somehow doesn't make it tasteless. Imagine it wasn't Carlin or even a comedian. Imagine if it was, since his day is coming up, Martin Luther King, Jr.? An AI MLK that delivers a speech that is an original speech but similar to one of his, but with a disclaimer that it wasn't a real MLK. Tasteless? I sure as hell think so.
That makes sense. I think what confuses me about this reaction more than anything is the fact that we've had all these different AI recreations of other dead artists that are being met with either a neutral or even positive reception.
I've seen a bunch of Kurt Cobain and Chester Bennington songs created by AI where the comments are all talking about how much they love/miss the artist, then this drops and everybody loses their shit.
I would call those equally tasteless. Digital necromancy, as a whole, is a pretty tasteless endeavor with only one exception I can think of- https://fortune.com/2023/10/12/cyberpunk2077-voice-actor-video-game-ai/
I agree with you on that. I do wonder how you would feel if GC had written all the material himself and they used the ai to bring his last planned show to life?
I don't know because I really don't think that sounds like Carlin would do. It's kind of like asking what if the Pope was a Muslim.
Suppose it's a different comedian then, or entertainer
George Carlin was a dedicated wordsmith. After he dropped the Hippy Dippy Weatherman schtick, he realized if he was going to be a comedian he needed to find an angle and chose language; the way we manipulate language to influence and oppress people fascinated him and he dedicated the rest of his career to exploring it on his specials, standup and in his books. He went from using the same act every time, to intentionally starting from scratch for each new project - he forced himself to build new content instead of reusing stuff, and it made him a much better comedian.
George Carlin did write all the material, the 'developer' of this trained it on his standup shows.
GC was not a fan of technology for it's own means, and he very much appreciated craft.
I think he'd start by giving this shit two big middle fingers.
Not OP but for me, I think it pivots on the permission of those who knew the comedian best and who might be hurt the most by not asking.
Whether AI writes the jokes, some 3rd party, or the comedian themself did, does the family want that out there, or would it be painful for Robin Williams’ family (remember that he killed himself) to watch a computer ape Williams’ comedy? If you’ve had a loved one pass away, would you want to be asked before someone made an AI of them performing jokes? And would it make it better or worse if the AI did an inferior job of replicating the original person?
Even if Carlin had planned a show, if the wishes of the family were that it be performed by Carlin himself or nobody, then I don’t think anyone had the right to turn an AI loose on the material to “give it a shot”.
Beyond that, I wonder if they have the legal right to use Carlin’s likeness, mannerisms, etc.
when you're dead, you can't claim your rights are infringed. it might be macabre but what-fucking-ever. don't watch it if you don't want to.
I’m certainly no legal expert, but I think it’s the rights of the family that are being infringed upon. I don’t know a thing about the Carlins specific situation, but I think it’s customary for a famous person to leave control of their “intellectual property”, use of their likeness and whatever else, to their next of kin or a trusted friend or someone. And it sounds like the family have those rights, because they’re looking into “what their rights are” (which sounds a lot like “legal options” to me).
I personally think it’s in bad taste specifically BECAUSE the person is deceased - they can’t make the call and go “yeah go ahead” or “I don’t like this, please stop”. Kind of like how someone can’t consent to sex if they’re unconscious (weird parallel, I know).
I feel like the YouTubers are assuming Carlin’s consent, when they don’t really have it. If they’d asked his family, they could have maybe had it. But instead they decided to just go ahead and hope that they can get away with it.
I think Carlin’s daughter has every right to be pissed about not getting asked for her permission, especially if she owns the rights to his material.
> I think it’s customary for a famous person to leave control of their “intellectual property”, use of their likeness and whatever else, to their next of kin or a trusted friend or someone.
it might be common, but it's utterly immoral.
No, but many still living people can and do consider the fact that a giant media corporation is puppeting a dead man to squeeze the last bit of profit out of him to be more than a little fucked up. Not an infringement of his rights specifically, but IMO an infringement of ethics and decency.
since you seem to be down with necrophilia please announce it in your will so people know whos corpse is a consenting fuck.
>you seem to be down with necrophilia
I didn't say that
you seem to be happy to see Carlin desecrated. not much difference from my view.
i said it's macabre
>people know whos corpse is a consenting fuck.
it makes no sense to talk about corpses consenting any more than doors or chairs.
found the corpse fucker
wrong