Did an AI write that hour-long “George Carlin” special? I’m not convinced.

Enlarge / "Well, we all have a face/That we hide away forever" (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

If you've paid any attention to the intersection of AI and culture this month, you’ve probably stumbled across a video billed as a “comedy AI” doing a 60-minute impression of a stand-up routine by the late, great George Carlin. Even if you didn’t watch “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” you probably stumbled on some of the many, many headlines suggesting that AI had brought the legendary comedian “back from the dead” in some sense.

Or maybe you saw some of the disgusted and/or panicked responses to the special among Carlin fans, comedy purists, and AI fearmongers. Those included Carlin’s daughter, Kelly, who told The Daily Beast that she’s talking to lawyers about the possibility of legal action against the special’s creators, the comedy podcast Dudesy.

But I think that anger is at least partially misplaced. After spending the last few weeks diving down a distractingly deep rabbit hole, I’m convinced that Dudesy’s “AI-generated” George Carlin special was actually written by a human, using voice- and image-generation tools to essentially perform in “AI face” as part of an ongoing comedy bit.