Matt Connarton Unleashed: Taylor Swift and George Carlin deepfakes

There was something that's been in the news and it involves Taylor Swift, but it's not you know, we don't on this iteration of the show. You got to wait for the podcast for the political talk. So no, we're not going there because are we going to talk about Japan assuring people you can come home? But well, so there's this there's this other issue which is not not not political, but the issue of and we've been talking about this on the show a lot. Taylor Swift has been the victim of a lot of people posting AI generated images really nasty ones.

Yeah, and very very wrong. This is kind of the the world we live in now, right, So AAR is completely into entertainment. Where do we draw a line? What's okay? Is it okay for you to use AI to help write your music? Is it okay to use AI to produce all the sound? What? Where's the line? Like? Where is it still the artist and where does it become the machine? Because that's what I can't figure out. Is it okay? Like I won't go on aney of the AI writer stuff because I don't want to ever have my writing conflated with using an AI thing to write it.

If that makes sense. Yeah, Yeah, we've talked about that. This has gotten to the point now where X, of course formerly known as Twitter, the Verge is reporting The Verge dot com is a great website. By the way, X is now blocking really Taylor Swift searches barely, it says, says your ex's blocked searches for Taylor Swift in reaction to a recent trend of graphic AI fakes of the world famous recording artists being posted to the site. Right now, if you search Taylor Swift or Taylor Swift AI on X, you may see a something went wrong message.

X head of business Joe Benneroch acknowledged the temporary message meant to prioritize safety, according to The Wall Street Journal, But it's very easy to get around, as we found out when trying some searches after performers. Casey Newton posted about the block yesterday. Rearranging the words in your search to Taylor AI Swift and instead of Taylor Swift AIS Taylor AI Swift or simply putting quotation marks around Swift's full name both returned results as of this writing. For example, even tacking another word onto one of the block search terms gets results.

Also, images still show up under the media tab, even for the terms that are otherwise blocked. So where does online entertainment draw that line? Right? Because X is kind of going, oh, maybe, well, but they're not really blocking anything. They're just doing a little fail good thing where they're only blocking those few words. And we all believe that artist should be able to, you know, do and say as they please. However, where do you draw that line when they're when people are taking artists and making them into sexual fantasies, or taking their voice and making their voice say things they never did, it says here.

Meta also seems to be addressing the issue, as both Threads and Instagram suggest quote Taylor Swift AI if you start typing tailor into their search boxes, but neither platform appears to show results. Instead, as of this writing, you may see a message saying that the term quote is sometimes associated with activities of dangerous organizations and individuals. Reports have said that Swift is considering legal action against the sites hosting the images, which users said they preferred Microsoft designer to make.

Microsoft CEO Sadia Nedella, I'm sure I didn't say that correctly, called the deep fakes alarming and Terrible in an interview with NBC Nightly News on Friday, and said he believes AI companies need to move fast to get better guardrails in place. I I don't know. You know, something that I keep thinking about with all of this is is is the problem the core problem? Is it the ability to do this stuff? Or is it the ability to do it so easily and in large quantity? And what I mean by that is when we're talking about, for example, these these graphic pictures of Taylor Swift, you could already do that pre AI, using things like photoshop.

You know, everyone is seen at one point or another photoshopped images that later turned out to be fake, or with like maybe maybe we'll talk a little bit too about the George Carlin lawsuit going on because his family is suing somebody over a you know, a quote unquote deep fake of a comedy special called I'm Glad I'm Dead. But but even you know, and there was a there have been instances of people's voices, you know, being AI generated fakes of people's voices used in robo calls and things like that.

But you could do that without AI too. All you need is somebody who does a really good impression of somebody and just record it. And everybody knows people who do impressions. So I don't think the issue is so much what you can do with this technology. I think it's how easily you can do it and in mass quantities, because it's stuff you could already do. You could already make photoshopped images that look realistic. You could already have somebody who does an impression of somebody, just do an impression of somebody.

So I don't think the problem is new in that sense. I think that just with this AI technology, it's just easier than it's ever been. I honestly agree with that. Yeah, Like this stuff's been out for years. You know, I'm a child of the Internet. Yeah, there's so many if x and Instagram weren't even a thing and it was some other platform, there's gonna be a funnel, there's gonna be a place for it's a dumping ground and you can go there and that's where it is. Yeah, So this stuff's been around for a long time.

Deep fakes used to be a big concern for people, where they were like putting like Arnold Schwarzenegger's face on Jim Carrey or like or I think there's actually one really popular video of when Jim Carrey does impersonations, because he does quite a few good ones like Clint Eastwood and other ones. Yeah, they morphed his face into those people right during the interview, so it could change, so you watch his face change like four or five different times. So this stuff's already been around for a very long time.

I don't think there's anything people can do about it. There's gonna be paywalls. I think that'll start to pop up, and there's already quite a few of them that do that because AI companies can do what they want. But there's gonna be companies that go the other route that don't care and unless you like you can try and rule a regulate it, but it's going to be like just they'll switch the formula, they'll do something that will change, or people will pirate that technology eventually, and then they'll just have it and it'll just be out there in the world.

It's like it's like three D printing, you know, like they've they've tried to curb that with certain things, but it's become so popular at this point. The only thing that kind of keeps people at that at this point, it's just the cost, right, So unless they make it insanely expensive or very incredibly encrypted and hard to pirate, I don't think it's gonna go away. It's it is. It's a double edge too, because you know, in some things it's funny and I like it. Like when I think of the AI music, I I'm not upset about it because sometimes it's really cool because there are artists that are gone, which it can I think be a great segue for George Carlin stuff, where like it's really cool to hear like a Frank Sinatra sound but he's singing like three Days Grace songs, right, but it's in his tone, with his sound and unique feeling and stuff.

I'm like, that's kind of cool or in like a funnier sense, Like one of my favorite ones is like Patrick Starr from SpongeBob singing free kunn of Leash from Corn. It sounds horrifically bad, but it's so funny, like because you know it's never gonna happen that like maybe they do, you know, do a surprise coin appearance in the show, but it's it's just it's never happened and it's not something that anyone's going to really get upset or up in arms about. But then there's other aspects where I think it was a drake in a weekend song that doesn't actually exist.

They never actually did a song together, but it sounds so damn good that everyone thought they did and they didn't. There's no combatants for it. They couldn't they couldn't do anything about it, right right. Oh, hello to a Carol Za Warwitz in the Facebook Clad chat and also Mike Pelapeda from Queen City Cabinet Treat, one of our great sponsors here at w M and H, and of course Mike is one of our co hosts on on Friday nights for Retrospection Radio. But yeah, I mean, I don't know what you do to what you do to stop any of this.

I can tell you that, well, there are limits though that some of the software can put on things. Because we've talked about it, we've talked, we've talked about it on the show, and it came up at that event that we went to at Mosaic about AI and yeah, where a number of months ago, this was it November, I think the Mosaic Art Collective actually held information session where they had a whole, a whole show about AI and art itself. Yeah, and I tried to use Dolly three to create an image of for a YouTube thumbnail because we had done a segment on the show talking about the Daryl Hall versus John Oates lawsuit and that software though when you enter prompts, it puts limits on what you can do.

And carl At who ran that event that we went to, was talking about how

they've they've made the AI resistant to putting celebrities and violent situations. Because I tried to make a thumbnail, I asked Dolly three in the prompt, I said, I want a thumbnail of Daryl Hall and John Oates in a boxing ring. Wouldn't do it? I actually had someone It was things AI generated stuff. Yeah, so you know, of course you're gonna go all out. And like I had a bunch of fun ones, those like I want like a one. I tried one for fun. I was like, I want Olympus git writing a Yoshi while eating candy, and it gave me that, So I was like perfect.

I'm like, all right now I want Bill Gates fighting. Will not do anything with Bill Gates anything anything. I was like interesting, you know, because Microsoft phones and sothing like that makes sense. Yeah, And then I tried doing all right, I want Donald Trump and Joe Biden fighting because I thought that would be funny, and it wouldn't do it. I could get around it a little bit where I'm like, all right, I want the forty fifth in the forty sixth president hanging out with each other, and then it would kind of do things.

But at some point it caught on to what I was doing because it is smart, and it would just not do anything more for me. So it is interesting how you can do it, but you get some really neat stuff like I have a wallpaper on my computer, and I have I have an unhealthy obsession with gnomes, so I wanted a gnome war battleground fighting mushroom people, and it gave me a pretty cool looking fantasy of these gnomes fighting against these mushroom people riding on like flowers and bugs, you name it, and so like, in some ways it's really cool, yeah, and then in other ways it's it's very limiting with that, Like the safeguards can also be a downside too, because you're trying to do something unique, and then it's like now you're you're not gonna be able to do that well.

With the holl of Oats example, the best I was able to get out of it. I got them playing chess, okay, and then and then and then I said, uh, I prompted it make them look angry, and it did it. So in the image they're playing chess and they both have angry expressions on their faces and it kind of looks like them kind of. But like anything violent stuff, it wouldn't do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, now do that on X to keep these deep fake pornographic pictures that would keep all the only fans models off. And that's not gonna make I joke, but it's really annoying.

Like I I I'd like to follow. The only reason I really have it is because I'm a huge gaming nerd, So I follow a lot of the companies and stuff. I can go click on a trailer or maybe I want to read patch notes on the game I like to play, And ninety percent of the comments is just only fans crap, and I'm not going there for that. I don't want to, you know, I could be at work. It's like, oh great, I wish that wasn't there. Yeah, and I'm like, that's awesome. So I don't even use the app at work because it's like I don't trust They're everywhere.

You can't get away from them or their logo. I went somewhere recently and they had only fans t shirts for sale with their logo. That's a big, big business. Seriously, these guys are marketing hard. They must have taken some lessons from Jene Simmons of kiss Hell. Right hello to Chris from the band Edgewise in the Facebook that sweaking of local music. Maybe we'll play a edge wid your Edgewise shirt on yesterday. I was wearing manage Wise shirt yesterday. Oh yeah, I've ever noticing it. Absolutely.

Let's see now the other thing too, Now, you have you been following that to George Carlin So I think actually you you brought it up and I had only heard about it because I did kind of here. I heard the interview with I believe it was his daughter, right, yes, yeah, so I heard the interview with her. I have not heard the special. I definitely want to. George Carland's definitely like, for me, my favorite comedian of all time. Yeah, the only one that's come closest to at least his kind of observational humor that I like now is like Bill burb But that's like a side note.

But I haven't heard the AI generated comedy bits because I'm curious, though, I will listen to it at some point before it gets taken down. I'm imagining it might, but I think it's going to take a while before it. Yeah. Now it's on YouTube and I'm actually looking at it right now. I'm going to play the very beginning of it in a moment. But cool. So it's called it's called George Carlin. I am glad that I am dead. And it's labeled as AI Comedy Special because George Carlin. You know, we lost him a while ago.

He's one of my favorites. Yeah, he might actually he might be. He might be my favorite. I kind of go back and back and forth. Now was your other one? Uh? Sam Kennison is in there? All right? I like that I've kind of I've kind of a top five. But yeah, i'd put uh, I'd put Sam in there definitely my five two definitely, Uh, And he's controversial, but Dave Chappelle would be in my top five then, let's see. So yeah, So the family is. So basically, the family of the estate of George Carlin is suing this YouTuber dudezy who uh or I don't know what other content dudes he creates, but so they yeah, so they created using AI.

They claim that the jokes and everything was was actually written by AI, although there's some skepticism about that. But uh, I'm just gonna play the beginning of it. I I I pre screened this so I know exactly where the first swear is, so I know what point not to go. But I want everybody to listen very carefully because I have an observation about this that I made I made to Jenny before the show. But just listen carefully to this audio. Here we go. This is just like the first maybe thirty seconds of the special Thank You, Thank You.

I like to start off with a heartfelt apology. I'm sorry it took me so long to come out with new material, but I do have a pretty good excuse. I was dead, so technically it wasn't my fault. If you want to blame somebody, you're gonna have to blame God. Okay, here's my observation. I don't think it sounds like George Carlin. It sounds like it went with the earlier days when he was when he came out the seven morg you can't stay on television right, like that era. That's the kind of vibe sound I'm getting because the the older comedic specials he had more of a rasp and oh yeah like that, uh you know your as your voice gets older.

I think it sounds much more like it's trying to blend those two together. Yeah, and that's why it sounds weird. Yeah, I don't think like, here's the thing, so and and the reason I bring this up is because you know, the family is suing. But I I don't know who would hear that and think that that was actually him. I don't like, I don't know who would be confused to me? What do you mean? You don't know to me? Right? But the title is do you think AI comedy special? And it's called I Am Glad that I'm Dead?

So it's obviously not really so to me, it's obvious it's not him, it's obviously, but he's but it's copyrighted material that they're taking. It's not copyright, it's it's it's a I generate. I think it's going to fall under parody law, and I think I think so stuff that has been like pushed on, almost ninety percent of those things haven't gone through the only one that's like tentative is like that, like I mentioned that that weekend and Drake when that mine that they might get somewhere with that, right, most of it all falls under parody, right.

I don't think that you guys are right on this one. And here's why. Years ago I worked on legislation involving the Salinger family who were trying to protect their dad's name because somebody was taking their dad's image and putting it on things they didn't approve of, like foilet paper for example. Yeah, all right, so, and it depends on what state you're in as to what the law allows you to protect. So this is going on in California. The state of California allows I believe it's one hundred years that the family has the rights to that person's image, likeness and so forth, because you know it's California, a lot of stars out there.

So yeah, they got one hundred years. So the thought process is that person's lifetime plus one generation of their kids get to maintain control. In New Hampshire. There is no protection like that. When you're dead, anybody can do whatever the heck they want to with, which is why I worked on that legislation. So this is all about protecting your image, your product, because Carlin, he's a product his jokes about God. You know, there's not the new coming up out of this thing about that. George Carlin has made jokes about God in every way, shape or form.

I can't see that. I can't agree that AI came up with that on its own because it's classic Carlin. Well yeah, but it's gonna draw from well right, it's gonna And that's been a big part of the discussion about the family owns the copyrights to his material and they haven't given permission to utilize him. Well, isn't that the same thing as

a band playing somebody else's music and getting paid for it? On this though, So I don't know if you ever got to play around with chat GTP before it. Oh yeah, So I played around with it with one of my friends, and we were trying to get it to be as creative as possible, like, all right, I want you to write me a song about it being sea shanty, and it gave very like you know, hoist the sails, raise the swords, drink your beer like all. It wrote that I'm like, all right, I want a wartime song, but in the style of a She's anty, and it did the same thing, but it reinvented the lyrics, so it did come up with all of it on its own, for three or four versus chorus that you could repeat, even a little spot for a bridge solo if you wanted one, and it did it all on its own.

So this is not something I had to make it right. So it's very very possible, and even in the world of like gaming, like Skyrim is probably one of my all time favorite games. It's a very popular game. There's a mod right now that you can get for that game that adds a follower where this person can fall you around in quest with you, and it's completely AI driven, so you can actually use your microphone to talk to it, and it will talk back to you as best as it can and pretend that it's in the world and role play with you.

You can ask like where you're born, and it'll name some city that's there, and then you can continue talking to the AI and it will adapt and learn with you as you grow in the game. So it's all it is very possible that it was AI driven. So yes, it is classic Carlin. But the AI has all of his stuff to pull from and then make it. And that's but that's the thing. The AI is using other people's knowledge to create its products. So what it only can do with whatever? If I had an AI computer and I only gave it the basics of information, that's where it's starting with, and it's going to draw from the information I gave it.

So if I feed the AI all a George Carlin and it develops this, I'm still taking copyrighting material. I'm still drawing. Huh, Asia where they don't have a lot of copyright protection. What's the US going to be able to do about somebody that does that? Over there? Come on, red hairing, red hair there's a whole we're not there. We're talking about the United States copyright law. Yeah, but where did due he posts this? Other than the Internet? Well it's on YouTube? Ye, Well, I mean like from like there?

Are they gonna claim it? Like it's that? It? So should they be able to make money off of? Only if Google lets them make money. It has to get monetized. They could demonetize the video and it makes absolutely no money. True, unless they have it behind some kind of paywall of their own. We know it's already money. For all we know, it's already demonetized. Most likely it could be demoniced, like I don't know if there's a way for the viewer to know if the video is demonetized. Usually it's the the YouTuber that knows that it's demonetized, and they in YouTube's a very family friendly, friendly oriented spot.

Now, even if you find rough stuff, you can't yell, swear words, you can't show death, you can't talk about stuff in certain degrees, they demonetize it. I actually don't think this is monetized because when I there was no AD, I didn't have to skip an ad or anything. It just plays. So they're not making any money. They're just gonna get views, and that's not gonna do anything for him. Uh Kate said in the chat, it sounds like the tam Ou version of Carlin. The thing is, if you like that, if you played that for me and you didn't tell me anything about it, and you just said to me, Matt, who do you think this is?

I wouldn't know. I wouldn't think, oh, that sounds like George Carlin. I might think it sounds Carlin, but that's not enough point. I'm very I'm very curious. I wondered if it grows on you as it goes, like, does it turn more into his voice in your head? Yeah, they may have that effect. Yeah. The bottom line is they didn't have any kind of permission to use his likeness or any of his copyrighted materials, and they're claiming that some of his some of what's in there is his copyrighted material is.

And it's possible there's specific jokes that show up that that that that are actual Carlin jokes. I can just tell you, like, for example, I did when I first started messing around with jat GPT, I asked it to write a kiss song, and it wrote, and it wrote, you know, it did the They wrote a song and you know, just the lyrics obviously, and it was it was kind of funny. There were lines in there like we we wear our face paint and get ready to rock the stage and just kind of cheesy stuff and it was fun.

And then just for the hell of it, you know, you can add prompts to get more specific, or you can just click regenerate and just you know, let it go out of the second time. So I just did that. I just clicked regenerate on the second pass all original lyrics, except this time the phrase I want to rock and roll all night actually showed up in the chorus. Ah, And I thought, Okay, now you're plagiarizing yourself chat GPT. But it's because it's drawing from actual lyrics and the information now an actual phrase.

So to your point about you know, you were saying that that the family is saying there, you know, there's actual this actual copyright in May. That's very possible. As well as using his likeness as imaging Kelly Carl and his daughter was stated as saying, quote a poorly executed facsimile cobbled together by unscrupulous individuals to capitalize on the extraordinary goodwill my father established with his adoring fans. And one thing I kind of look at with this thought, like the end of the day, you know, even if the lawsuit goes through and passes like that, it's this is going to be a very interesting technology.

We're like, let's say you go into a museum and they're doing it's maybe it's a comedian museum. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could go in front of a holographic stage through and it's George Carlin standing there wagging his finger at you, saying things in his voice and his likeness, and you've got just a glimpse of that history, and that's what's going to that's where it's already heading. Like a couple of the museums I went in DC, they had holographic people standing in front and but granted, this isn't like there's no way we're gonna have have the voice of like George Washington, but as people dressed up as like all these colonial people and all that.

But it's like they're moving across the screen that you can't really see it, just it seems like they're actually there. So if they do that with artists like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, how cool would that be to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and there's Grand Master Flash and then they're and there with you, Gene Simmons, and they're all hanging out with each other, sounding exactly like themselves Like that, that's the beauty of the technology and it's and it will get there because this is like our our stone tablet.

It's gonna be years from now. Well said it like that. That's kind of where I view it. So you know, you can be upset. This was clearly made not to you know, belittle George Carlin ry. This is somebody who likes and that's why he put it's an AI thing. And I think the title is actually really clever. Yeah, I do think that is a George Carland inspired title, whether the AI came up with the title or the or dudes he did agree. I think that's a I think that's a funny title. That's definitely something I would click on.

If if George Carland could come back from the grave and make a title, that would be a definite way to absolutely I agree. I agree, And yeah, I'm definitely gonna listen to the whole thing. But it's gonna be hard. Yeah, it's gonna be hard for the family to prove harm if it was made out of love, especially right you know, if he really does feel bad, maybe he'll take it down. But but I think this is a person probably experimenting with AI. I'm curious if this guy actually has more than like this one long video or Yeah.

I haven't had a chance to learn what the likes come through, learn more about him, but I'm very curious. It'll also be interesting to see what they give for a response. Now, the defendants haven't shoot any kind of statement in response. They haven't put in their oh what do they call it. They haven't done their response to the lawsuit to the court yet. Yeah, so we haven't seen anything from them, so it'll be interesting to see what they come up with. Yeah, you know, as an answer to this, do they have a legal leg to stand on?

Is it right? Well, here's a question for you guys. Is it in your opinion when an artist dies, should that be it anybody fair game? Or do you think they should be able to bequeath the rights to their image to at least one generation. I don't know, only because I remember years ago when I was a kid, there was the holographic display of Tupac Shakur rapping, and it'd been years after he had died, and people were really upset about it. But at the same token, there's not another rapper that's anywhere close to Tupac's level of greatness other than like I mean, you can reference Biggie, but obviously he's gone too, but that was alive at that time.

So it's one of those. And another one that came up to i'll, you know, discrepancy society. Michael Jackson another one, also the same person that had a holographic thing done with his likeness and image and everything like that. But he's considered the king of pop and it was done not out of malice, but because it was cool to see somebody of his time and greatness the display across the stage. So I think there should be a grieving period. Like I think it would be too soon if, like, say, some who's he just passed, Carl Robinson, Carl Weathers is that his name?

Oh yeah from oh he paid a played a Paulo Creed in the Rocky movie. Yeah, yeah, so he just passed, Like, maybe not do a likeness with him right away, you know, give give some time, but a couple of years down the road. If it was something done in kindness, why not, you know, as long as it's not somebody doing it out of malice. I don't think people have an issue with like the Taylor Swift photos clearly done out of malice people don't like that. Not a lot of people are a fan of that. But if it's done in kindness, I don't think people are gonna have as much a issue.

Yeah, yeah, it will be very interesting. I can see this kind of going either way, but I think most likely, I don't think the family is going to be successful in there. I think it's very possible they will be successful because they're suing in California, where they have more legal legs to stand on. It makes sense, but I don't know if there's a precedent, though there's already precedent since well, I mean around the rest of the states, though, well, every state is different. Like I said, in this state, the minute you die, nobody has anybody can do whatever they want to with you.

In California it's a hundred years. In some states it's fifty or seventy five. So I'd be okay with it. Like myself personally, I wouldn't be upset somebody managed to copy my voice and make something net of it. Okay, why not? All right? Fair game? You say that. This is what I said when I was up there talking about it across from the conquered State House. As an adult store or there was. I don't know if it's still there. There was an adult store, So the minute the governor passes away, his face can show up in that adult store on something very unokay, and the family would have no control or rights to make that go away, right, I mean, you think that's okay, and let I well, we'll put a clause in there.

If you write a will that says it's not okay, then it's not okay. But if you don't write a will, fair game. But that's put on the Yeah, I see, here's what we're talking about. The daughter has controlling rights over his copyrighted material. Yeah, well, it'll be we gotta we gotta wrap up this segment, but it'll be very interesting to see where this goes conversation. Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely

Matt Connarton Unleashed: Taylor Swift and George Carlin deepfakes

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