The property of the comic George Carlin sued the makers of a podcast on Thursday after they claimed to make use of synthetic intelligence to impersonate Carlin for a comedy particular.
The lawsuit was filed in opposition to Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen, hosts of the podcast “Dudesy,” saying that they infringed on the property’s copyrights by coaching an A.I. algorithm on 5 many years of Carlin’s works for “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” which was posted on the podcast’s YouTube channel, the place it stays. The lawsuit additionally says they illegally used Carlin’s identify and likeness.
The lawsuit requires a choose to stop “Dudesy” — which advertises itself on social media as “A.I., Podcast, YouTube present” — from utilizing Carlin’s copyrighted works sooner or later and to require the podcast to destroy the episode’s audio and video.
Danielle Del, a spokeswoman for Sasso, stated Dudesy just isn’t truly an A.I.
“It’s a fictional podcast character created by two human beings, Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen,” Del wrote in an e mail. “The YouTube video ‘I’m Glad I’m Useless’ was utterly written by Chad Kultgen.”
A spokesperson for Kultgen didn’t reply to a request for remark. Del declined to remark about whether or not the Carlin-sounding voice was generated by A.I.
Josh Schiller, a lawyer for the Carlin property, stated the lawsuit that was filed in Federal District Court docket in California would transfer ahead regardless of the podcast’s backtracking of the A.I. claims.
“We don’t know what they’re saying to be true,” he stated. “What we’ll know is that they are going to be deposed. They may produce paperwork, and there will likely be proof that exhibits a method or one other how the present was created.”
The lawsuit is a part of an unsettled authorized debate about whether or not coaching A.I. language studying fashions on publicly out there written, visible and audio content material infringes on the copyrights of artists and authors.
In July, the comic Sarah Silverman joined a class-action lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI and one other in opposition to Meta, accusing the businesses of copyright infringement through the use of her work to coach their A.I. fashions. A gaggle of distinguished novelists, together with John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen and Elin Hilderbrand, filed an identical lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI in September. In December, The New York Occasions additionally filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI and Microsoft, a significant investor in OpenAI, of copyright infringement.
Carlin’s daughter, Kelly, denounced the “Dudesy” particular.
“It’s a poorly executed facsimile cobbled collectively by unscrupulous people to capitalize on the extraordinary good will my father established along with his adoring fanbase,” she wrote in a press release.
“George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Useless” begins with a voice saying, “Hey, my identify is Dudesy, and I’m a comedy A.I.” It goes on to say, “I simply need to let very clearly that what you’re about to listen to just isn’t George Carlin. It’s my impersonation of George Carlin that I developed in the very same method a human impressionist would.”
“I listened to all of George Carlin’s materials and did my finest to mimic his voice, cadence and angle in addition to the subject material I believe would have him at present,” the voice continues, earlier than a distinct voice that appears like Carlin riffs on present occasions, together with homelessness, the police, mass shootings and synthetic intelligence.
