Kelly Carlin, the daughter of the late George Carlin, has criticized a comedy special created using artificial intelligence to impersonate her father, who died in 2008.
Carlin made the comment Wednesday evening, about a day after the comedy special titled “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead” was released on YouTube. Carlin stated that her father spent his life “perfecting his craft from his very human life” and that no attempt by a machine to recreate his technique would ever “replace his genius.”
“These AI generated products are clever attempts at trying to recreate a mind that will never exist again,” Carlin wrote on X, the social media platform once known as Twitter. “Let’s let the artist’s work speak for itself. Humans are so afraid of the void that we can’t let what has fallen into it stay there.”
Carlin also suggested that instead of watching AI-generated comedy specials of dead comedians, people ought to watch specials by actual comedians. She added that those who wish to watch a special featuring her father can select from the 14 specials he did when he was alive.
In regards to the comedy special impersonating her father, Carlin suggested that those who wish to combat “this AI bulls***” could comment on the special on Youtube and tell the creators of the special “how you feel.”
The special was created using a comedy AI called Dudesy and features AI-generated images of an audience laughing at Dudesy’s impersonation of George Carlin. At the start of the special, Dudesy clarifies that the comedian himself is not speaking and that viewers should view it in the same way they would view “Andy Kaufman impersonating Elvis, or like Will Ferrell impersonating George W. Bush.”
As of Thursday, the special has over 103,000 views, and has 4,771 likes against 5,102 dislikes.
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Kelly Carlin’s criticism of the comedy special impersonating her father comes a few months after Zelda Williams, Robin Williams’s daughter, expressed concern over AI. She said she found it “personally disturbing” that AI had been used to recreate her father’s voice, as he died by suicide in 2014.
Williams also said that AI recreations of actors, including their voices, are “a poor facsimile of greater people” at best and “a horrendous Frankensteinian monster” at worst.