George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead

An AI-generated voice of George Carlin complaining about streaming services and Taylor Swift is either a technological marvel or an act of digital grave-robbing, depending on who you ask. Released on YouTube in early 2024, “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead” was presented as an hour-long set created by “Dudesy,” a self-proclaimed comedy artificial intelligence managed by podcasters Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen. The synthetic Carlin delivers a steady stream of rants about modern American life, attempting to replicate the late comedian’s signature cadence and structural skepticism on topics like mass shootings, social media, and the rise of AI itself.

The illusion of an autonomous, joke-writing machine did not last long. Following immediate backlash from Carlin’s family, his estate filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging copyright and right-of-publicity violations. It was soon revealed that the special wasn’t the spontaneous output of a neural network; Kultgen had written the script himself before running it through a voice-cloning generator. The resulting performance suffers from the lack of actual human timing, sounding more like a monotonous Dennis Leary monologue than a seasoned stand-up working a room.

In the settlement, Sasso and Kultgen agreed to remove the special from all platforms and promised never to use Carlin’s voice or image again.