AI George Carlin comedy special sparks fury: “Disgusting”

An AI-generated comedy special featuring the late George Carlin has been created against his daughter’s wishes and is now facing fan backlash.

Carlin’s comedy skills were appreciated by many. He had multiple comedy specials to his name, appeared in films such as Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and narrated many animated Thomas & Friends shows. He died in 2008 from heart failure.

The comedian is now gracing the screen again in the AI-generated special titled George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead.

Available on YouTube, the hour-long special was created by comedy AI Dudesy. The video’s description on YouTube after Dudesy’s introduction reads: “For the next hour I’ll be doing my best George Carlin impersonation just like a human being would. I tried to capture his iconic style to tackle the topics I think the comedy legend would be talking about today.”

The video aired on January 9, and at the time of publishing this article, it had been viewed over 88,300 times by YouTube users and clocked up almost 2,000 comments.

It pulled on his previous content to tackle subject matters that Dudesy believed Carlin would have used for material now such as religion, reality TV and homelessness.

Carlin’s daughter Kelly shared her thoughts on X, formerly Twitter, across three posts that started: “My statement regarding the AI-generated George Carlin special: My dad spent a lifetime perfecting his craft from his very human life, brain, and imagination. No machine will ever replace his genius. These AI generated products are clever attempts at trying to recreate a mind…”

She continued: “Let’s let the artist’s work speak for itself,” and “If you want to listen to the genuine George Carlin, he has 14 specials that you can find anywhere.”

Although Dudesy clearly states in the audio that once you hit play, the special is “not George Carlin,” but Dudesy’s “impersonation of George Carlin,” many have labeled it controversial.

Dudesy AI has a YouTube show and hosts a podcast with comedian Will Sasso and podcaster Chad Kultgen.

Replying to Kelly’s post, a social media user commented: “JFC, Kelly, I’m so sorry you have to make a statement about this. I’m sorry it exists. And I’m deeply disturbed that anyone felt it was okay to take this upon themselves to do. I hope there is some recourse to prevent this thievery from happening again.”

“George Carlin would absolutely hate this! So disgusting that this is a thing,” an angry fan shared.

A third added: “What, and I can’t stress this enough, THE F***. AI is not and never will be George Carlin.”

An uncertain listener said: “Having been a fan for most of my life, it was a very conflicting listen. It was as close as an impression could be or a tribute act without being the real thing. Scary.”

The special missed the mark for one fan, who wrote: “I genuinely don’t understand how someone can claim to understand Carlin’s comedy so well that they can replicate him with AI but also not understand that George Carlin would have f****** despised them for being so creatively bankrupt and making us all culturally stupider.”

YouTube filled up with comments as well, one viewer wrote: “George Carlin was one of the greatest thinkers of all time. And he articulated those thoughts better than anyone. To ‘bring him back to life’ is dystopian and surreal on a level that makes me sick.”

Another said: “There is no way George Carlin’s estate has endorsed this,” which another onlooker agreed with: “This is everything Carlin didn’t want for the future. He would hate it lol.”

However, the special won some comedy lovers over, with one person writing: “Carlin or not, it DID make me laugh out loud in places, and it did have a lot of valid points. It got a like from me, and it’s definitely better than the likes of Dane Cook (sorry!) and Amy Schumer (NOT sorry!)”

Another added: “All these folks are so very salty even though Dudesy spent almost a minute saying this is just an impersonation. That being said, this was actually pretty well done, especially for an AI.”

Newsweek has contacted Will Sasso’s talent agent and Chad Kultgen’s legal representatives via email for comment.