The George Carlin AI Special is a Message Straight From Hell

George Carlin is taking a dirt nap. He’s not coming back. That is, unless we find some new way to return folks from the beyond, which I don’t foresee happening any time soon. Realistically, even if we encounter this reality-altering zombie technology, Carlin won’t be in the top 25 to get the Jesus treatment.

But when it comes to new invasive technology, there are also the bad for bad sake things that percolate up, and the new AI-generated George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead “special” is that kind of whack– it absolutely sucks.

For context, I’m a George Carlin whore. He’s a massive influence on how I think as a human and how I draw context as a writer. When I was a kid in the 90s, my best friend and I devoured his stand-up specials like they were the gospel. I know every nuance to his iconic “It’s Bad For Ya,” and I also have a photo of Carlin as my lock screen on my phone. So, yes, I checked out the AI thing out of morbid curiosity. That was not my wisest move.

Some AI company called Dudesy slapped together this “special” in Carlin’s style, which I cannot be clear enough, is as good as going to a local open mic. The entirety of the prospect has the jokes Carlin could write waiting for coffee out of boredom and never use, even as a premise. I put “special” in quotations because it’s not something crafted with hours of working the material, but instead it’s feeble attempt at capitalizing on a world-renowned figure–something that really pissed off his family.

Carlin’s daughter, Kelly, spoke about the special. “No machine will ever replace his genius,” she wrote on X. “These AI-generated products are clever attempts at trying to recreate a mind that will never exist again. 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… Here’s an idea, how about we give some actual living human comedians a listen to?”

And she’s right. We’re trapped in this vacuum of what someone who’s gone would think, what they would say about the horror show we’re all enduring. I’m guilty; I wrote a piece back when Trump was running the carnival, wondering what Carlin would say about this cultural used car lot we call society. Social media is a cesspool of nubile bodies and those willing to pay to see them, while the media fails us because it’s on the take just like everyone else.

Yes, Carlin’s input would be from an angle we likely wouldn’t have mined. The more I think about it, his time has passed, like Mike Royko, Hunter Thompson, or James Baldwin. While we can look to our heroes for their takes on the day, we should look to those experiencing it now, the voices many don’t know. 2024 goes to the spoils of the highest bidder with the sharpest knife, they get to butcher the hog. The grim realities of our world dictate the moral trappings of a cabal that doesn’t give a fuck about any of us down here–as Carlin believed two decades back.

Whatever the purpose of making and releasing this special was, it wasn’t for the betterment of society. It was for shock value, and if anything, it shows us why AI art in any form is a contentious subject. The special did have a disclaimer that it’s only an interpretation of Carlin’s comedy, but the stink of garbage is up and down this thing. “AI will not replace most jobs, it’s going to make them easier,” Carlin Dudesy said in the special. “Right now, you should be watching a few YouTube videos to figure out how to train ChatGPT to do your job for you so you can dick off all day and still get a raise. And if AI does replace your job, rest assured the billionaires will still find a way to force you into wage slavery for $10 to $15 hours a day so you won’t have time to think about restructuring society into a more equitable model for everyone.”

While messing with the guy’s likeness is one thing, the comedy aspect of the endeavor is just plain shitty. When I say it’s bad, it’s bad. The entirety of the special plays on what AI can do – copy humans to a certain level, but, more importantly, what it can’t. You can make hacky jokes in the style of Carlin, but his masterful eye of human nature gave him not one, but multiple decades of material that people still aspire to today. The voice doesn’t sound like George Carlin, but a creepy “version” of the stuff that the sci-fi movies warn us about. The video couples with equally weird moving AI art that isn’t any less gross and plays on whatever topic the machine is discussing. It’s a shit show.

Dudesy is a podcast that Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen host, and an AI program that gave us this audio abortion. It’s all on YouTube, and again, it’s total ass.

By capitalizing on this AI-driven version of Carlin, the machine or whatever Dudesy dubs as its central mechanism makes me want to throw my iPhone down and slit my wrists over the fact that they’re publicly putting their name in the same sentence with jokes that veer on the level of a grandpa telling wisecracks on a Saturday Morning Cartoon. The jokes it tells in Carlin’s style aren’t good. All the piece is, is an hour-long commercial for the possibility of AI, which in itself sucks.

Being a fan of Sasso for his work on Loudermilk, the move especially sucks, even though he tried to walk back from his attachment to the concept. “I personally dont want to hear a fuckin’ Nirvana song that’s not written by Kurt Cobain and played by fuckin’ Nirvana, I dont give a shit, I don’t give a shit. It’s not real, it doesn’t matter,” Sasso said. “Anyone can do an impression, Dudesy is doing an impression…I don’t think a new comic has anything to worry about because we need new voices.”

We still have thinkers; we still have writers and comics. The mental tax code of relying on a technology that’s inherently skeezy serves as a reminder that this technology every business dick races to embrace is also something that lacks the human spirit. There are snares to the world of AI that will be game changers. Look, I’ve taken a buck to tell you it won’t be some Skynet monster, but we all gotta pay up when the rent man has his fist out. The AI machine is supposed to learn for its sentience, just like back when Sam Altman, the guy who is synonymous with AI, even once had a headline written about him from CNN, “Sam Altman warns AI could kill us all” but instead now, tries to sell us on the idea of AI being real cool for money’s sake when it comes to technology.

There’s a constant dog and pony show of trying to sell us on AI when packaged in the ghost of one of our greatest minds of the 20th Century. It’s bad enough that KISS is still alive and working on AI holograms. Let people die. Let us wonder about their scope and influence, but instead, we get McDonald’s drive-throughs courtesy of IBM and terrible take on comedy by tasteless robots and podcasts no one listens to, but now get a bump out of a cheap thrill. Comedy, art, and writing are gifts only we can provide through context and imagination–not sequenced code.

If you want to endure this nightmare it’s up on YouTube. I wouldn’t bother.