A new comedy special starts with the quote, “I’m sorry it took me so long to come out with new material, but I do have a pretty good excuse. I was dead.”

The voice sounds like comedian George Carlin, but that would be impossible, as Carlin died in 2008. The voice in the special is actually generated by an artificial intelligence (AI).

“This is not my father. It’s so ghoulish. It’s so creepy,” Carlin’s daughter, Kelly Carlin-McCall, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

The YouTube account Dudesy, which is described as a podcast, artificial intelligence and “first of its kind media experiment,” released the hour-long special on Jan. 9. CBC reached out to the producers of Dudesy and its co-host Will Sasso for comment, but did not get a response.

Sasso and co-host Chad Kultgen say they can’t reveal the company behind the AI due to a non-disclosure agreement, according to Vice. The channel launched in March 2022.

Carlin-McCall said the channel never reached out to the family or asked for permission to use her father’s likeness. She says her father took great pride in the thought and effort he put into writing his material.

  • irmoz@reddthat.com
    2·
    11 months ago

    It’s not labour, it’s computation - he didn’t do a thing, so you can’t say he’s enslaved, and even if we called it labour, it’s not his labour.

    • EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world
      1·
      11 months ago

      I never said he was enslaved, what the fuck? And I also never said the content generated by the AI was his labor, I said BASED on his labor.

      Reading comprehension is difficult I know, keep working at it.

      • FaceDeer@kbin.social
        2·
        11 months ago

        Go back up to the top of this message chain. It’s all in response to a comment that said:

        Welcome to the world of posthumous digital slavery!

        And I responded calling this use of the term “slavery” ridiculous. A slave is a person who is being treated as property. There is no person here, George Carlin is dead and the AI impersonating him is not a person. So there is no slave, which means there is no slavery.

          • FaceDeer@kbin.social
            2·
            11 months ago

            I’m explaining why the conversation that you joined is about slavery. You were confused about why that was the topic so I’m pointing out that it was the topic before you joined. You should probably read the upstream comments when you join a conversation in progress to find out what is going on.

            • EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world
              1·
              11 months ago

              And I didn’t drive the conversation to the term nor restate it myself. I’m not confused at all, you can try and misguide someone else if you must insist on that. You came up implying I used the term and can cease your nonsense. If you have issue with a term, address the person using said term. Everyone in a conversation aren’t a hive mind which is why I asked and continue to ask that you respond directly to the person using rhetoric that you have issue with.

              • FaceDeer@kbin.social
                2·
                11 months ago

                You didn’t drive the conversation to the term because it was already there. That’s what it was about when you joined in.

                If you don’t want to talk about “digital slavery” then don’t join a conversation about it.

                • EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  11 months ago

                  I added something else in my comment, not everything downstream has to be about supporting the same ideas and rhetoric. There’s this thing in conversation where each person contributes from different angles and relevant commentary.

                  Unlike verbal conversation, you can have multiple people commenting directly to the top person. I won’t sit and explain how comment threads work but you can go to the comment you’re mad about instead of the latest person down the line.

                  Wonders of technology.

                  • FaceDeer@kbin.social
                    2·
                    11 months ago

                    You were saying something about labor, which had been brought up as part of some kind of justification of this being “slavery”. Pons_Aelius wrote:

                    Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. - The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary

                    So all this “labor” stuff you jumped in on was indeed part of the slavery discussion. People were arguing about whether this was somehow extracting labor from George Carlin against his will, despite him having been dead for over a decade. When people continued discussing the slavery issue, you responded:

                    I never said he was enslaved, what the fuck?

                    Which suggested you had no idea what had happened in the earlier part of the conversation leading to this point. I tried to explain it to you.

                    At this point I have no idea what else you’re trying to argue. I’ve given you as full a recounting as I can, if you’re still confused about what’s going on you’re on your own.