The lawsuit, filed in a US court, accuses the makers of the special of nicking George Carlin's entire body of work from five decades of comedy routines to train an AI chatbot, which wrote the episode's script. It also slams them for using his voice and image to plug the show.
The complaint demands a court order to take down the special, as well as damages. It's one of the first legal actions taken by the estate of a dead celeb for unlicensed use of their work and likeness to make a new, AI-generated creation and was filed as Hollywood is warning about the use of AI to impersonate people without their say or pay.
Author and producer Kelly Carlin, daughter of George Carlin, said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, "We have to draw a line in the sand." She stressed, "This is going to be a fight on every front, with entertainment at the centre."
The legal battle comes from an hour-long special titled George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead, which was released on 9 January on the YouTube channel of Dudesy, a podcast hosted by Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen.
It's described as a "first of its kind media experiment." The show's idea is based on using an AI program called "Dudsey AI" - which has access to most of the host's records, including texts, social media and browsing histories - to write, create and control episodes in the style of Sasso and Kulten, who are named in the complaint.
In the special, an AI-generated George Carlin, copying the comedian's signature style and tone, narrates jokes over images made by AI and tackles modern topics such as the rise of reality TV, streaming services and AI itself. Most subjects became popular after he died in 2008.
According to the complaint, the special was made through unauthorised use of Carlin's copyrighted works.
At the start of the video, it's explained that the AI program that made the special swallowed five decades of Carlin's original standup routines, owned by the comedian's estate, as training materials, "thereby making unauthorised copies" of the copyrighted works.
A big hurdle in suits filed against OpenAI and Meta by creators claiming copyright infringement has been proving that their tools used plaintiffs' works as training materials. Given that AI models are mostly secret, no solid proof can be offered to show that a specific work was used in a chatbot's creation (OpenAI stopped giving out information about the sources of its data set after it was sued).
The suit claims that Sasso and Kultgen "admitted that they fed thousands of hours of George Carlin's original, copyrighted routines to an AI machine," intending to fake the comedian's voice and humour.
George Carlin's estate claims breaches of right of publicity laws for use of Carlin's name and likeness. It points to the promotion of the special as an AI-generated George Carlin show, where the dead comedian was "brought back to life" using AI tools.
"The defendants tried to cash in on the name, reputation, and likeness of George Carlin in making, plugging, and selling the Dudesy Special and using fake images of Carlin, Carlin's voice, and images meant to look like Carlin's presence on a stage," the complaint states.
The suit expects a possible free speech defence. It says the special "has no comedy or creative value without its self-proclaimed link with George Carlin" and does not, for example, "mock him as a performer or offer an independent critique of society."
The complaint argues that the AI-generated work may prevent younger audiences, who are not familiar with the comedian and may not have liked the special, from enjoying his real body of work. It says the show "misrepresents Carlin's art" and "takes the introduction of Carlin's work away from where it belongs - with the words of his real work and the owners of its copyrights - and puts it into the hands" of Sasso and Kultgen, who have said they can't reveal the name of the company that made and programmed the Dudesy AI.
While the special was not making money through ads, the suit claims its makers looked to boost their profiles with the episode.
"If more people saw Dudesy's content based on Defendants' exploitation of George Carlin's name, likeness, and copyrighted works, then more people would see ads, would hear the paid sponsorships read during the Dudesy podcast episodes, and would have a chance to click through the links to buy the Defendants' merchandise and subscribe to Dudesy+," the complaint states. "In turn, the audience for Dudesy's offerings would grow, attracting more sponsors."
George Carlin's long-time manager and the executor Jerry Hamza, said: "To do what they did, they needed to, without permission, take a reputation, a body of work, a voice and a likeness and use it to draw attention to themselves."
He said, "It raises civil and criminal liability issues under both California and federal laws regulating rights of publicity and copyright."
