Simon WillisonJan 25, 2024

I'm quoted in this @arstechnica piece about that recent "AI generated" George Carlin special

I don't think it was written by AI

I found the whole thing grossly disrespectful, but I do slightly appreciate the meta-joke here that the AI generated text is fake and was actually written by humans

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/01/did-an-ai-write-that-hour-long-george-carlin-special-im-not-convinced/

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

"Everyone is ready to believe that AI can do things, even if it can't."

Ars Technica
Show threadSimon WillisonJan 25, 2024
“The real story here is… everyone is ready to believe that AI can do things, even if it can't,” Willison told Ars. “In this case, it's pretty clear what's going on if you look at the wider context of the show in question. But anyone without that context, [a viewer] is much more likely to believe that the whole thing was AI-generated… thanks to the massive ramp up in the quality of AI output we have seen in the past 12 months.”
Show threadSimon WillisonJan 27, 2024

Confirmed by the New York Times:

> Danielle Del, a spokeswoman for Sasso, said Dudesy is not actually an A.I.
>
> “It’s a fictional podcast character created by two human beings, Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen,” Del wrote in an email. “The YouTube video ‘I’m Glad I’m Dead’ was completely written by Chad Kultgen.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/arts/carlin-lawsuit-ai-podcast-copyright.html

George Carlin’s Estate Sues Podcasters Over A.I. Episode

The lawsuit claims that an hourlong comedy special on YouTube violated Carlin’s copyright.

The New York Times
Show threadfrewJan 27, 2024
@simon fwiw sasso did an interview with Lex Friedman about dudesy. P sure it’s like, inside out ai. Like the ai prompts the humans?
Show threadSimon WillisonJan 27, 2024

@frew Wow that's embarrassing if the Friedman interview didn't hone in on the fact that it's all basically a comedy hoax

They started the Dudesy thing back in early 2022, before even GPT-3.5-Turbo / ChatGPT had been released - there's no WAY they had anything interesting running on 2022-era GPT-3

Show threadfrewJan 27, 2024
@simon right, I wouldn’t characterize it as a hoax as much as a gimmick? It’s been a long time though so I could be forgetting
Show threadSimon Willison

@frew I mean it's a comedy bit - no harm caused at first, but it's started contributing to the problem that people think AI is capable of WAY more than it actually is

I'm not a regular Lex Friedman viewer so maybe I'm wrong in guessing that he would care about whether or not the things his guests tell him are misleading or not!

Jan 27, 2024 at 6:27pmWeb
Show threadfrewJan 27, 2024
@simon eh Lex is great but the podcast is an entertainment venue more than anything else. The origins of “AI Podcast” are basically irrelevant at this point