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The estate of the comedian George Carlin<\/a> sued the makers of a podcast on Thursday after they claimed to use artificial intelligence to impersonate Carlin for a comedy special.<\/p>\n The lawsuit was filed against Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen, hosts of the podcast \u201cDudesy,\u201d saying that they infringed on the estate\u2019s copyrights by training an A.I. algorithm on five decades of Carlin\u2019s works for \u201cGeorge Carlin: I\u2019m Glad I\u2019m Dead<\/a>,\u201d which was posted on the podcast\u2019s YouTube channel, where it remains. The lawsuit also says they illegally used Carlin\u2019s name and likeness.<\/p>\n The lawsuit calls for a judge to prevent \u201cDudesy\u201d \u2014 which advertises itself on social media as \u201cA.I., Podcast, YouTube show\u201d \u2014 from using Carlin\u2019s copyrighted works in the future and to require the podcast to destroy the episode\u2019s audio and video.<\/p>\n Danielle Del, a spokeswoman for Sasso, said Dudesy is not actually an A.I.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a fictional podcast character created by two human beings, Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen,\u201d Del wrote in an email. \u201cThe YouTube video \u2018I\u2019m Glad I\u2019m Dead\u2019 was completely written by Chad Kultgen.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A spokesperson for Kultgen did not respond to a request for comment. Del declined to comment about whether the Carlin-sounding voice was generated by A.I.<\/p>\n Josh Schiller, a lawyer for the Carlin estate, said the lawsuit that was filed in Federal District Court in California would move forward despite the podcast\u2019s backtracking of the A.I. claims.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know what they\u2019re saying to be true,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we will know is that they will be deposed. They will produce documents, and there will be evidence that shows one way or another how the show was created.\u201d<\/p>\n The lawsuit is part of an unsettled legal debate about whether training A.I. language learning models on publicly available written, visual and audio content infringes on the copyrights of artists and authors.<\/p>\n In July, the comedian Sarah Silverman joined a class-action lawsuit<\/a> against OpenAI and another against Meta, accusing the companies of copyright infringement by using her work to train their A.I. models. A group of prominent novelists, including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen and Elin Hilderbrand, filed a similar lawsuit<\/a> against OpenAI in September. In December, The New York Times also filed a lawsuit<\/a> accusing OpenAI and Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, of copyright infringement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Carlin\u2019s daughter, Kelly, denounced the \u201cDudesy\u201d special.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a poorly executed facsimile cobbled together by unscrupulous individuals to capitalize on the extraordinary good will my father established with his adoring fanbase,\u201d she wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cGeorge Carlin: I\u2019m Glad I\u2019m Dead\u201d begins with a voice saying, \u201cHello, my name is Dudesy, and I\u2019m a comedy A.I.\u201d It goes on to say, \u201cI just want to let you know very clearly that what you\u2019re about to hear is not George Carlin. It\u2019s my impersonation of George Carlin that I developed in the exact same way a human impressionist would.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI listened to all of George Carlin\u2019s material and did my best to imitate his voice, cadence and attitude as well as the subject matter I think would have interested him today,\u201d the voice continues, before a different voice that sounds like Carlin riffs on current events, including homelessness, the police, mass shootings and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n