Aloha Hollywood tech nerds!

In this week’s post:

🤖 The AI George Carlin Special Was Not Actually AI

🕛️ Tenet Goes Back to the Theater

🍿 Kernels: 3 links worth making popcorn for

The AI George Carlin Special Was Not Actually AI

I’ve been following the “George Carlin special written and performed by AI” story with great interest. I’ve linked to it before but Ed Zitron’s caustic review of the “special” itself is a must-read.

The short and quick story is this: the Dudesy Podcast is a show that claims to be run by an artificial intelligence named “Dudesy” along with comedians Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen. On a recent episode, Dudesy unveiled a George Carlin special it had created, generating significant media coverage and controversy.

As detailed in one of two terrific Ars Technica pieces about this story, the Carlin estate promptly filed a lawsuit, resulting in the show’s revelation via The New York Times that “[Dudesy]’s a fictional podcast character created by two human beings, Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen… The YouTube video ‘I’m Glad I’m Dead’ was completely written by Chad Kultgen.”

An earlier Ars Technica article had predicted that the Dudesy “AI” was most likely not an actual AI at all and simply a conceit for the show, given its repeated references to kayfabe, a professional wrestling term used to describe wrestling’s in-universe story elements that aren’t actually true.

So: does it matter that a comedy podcast bends the truth on whether its AI character is actually a true artificial intelligence? Not really. I don’t need comedy podcasts to be truthful journalistic enterprises.

What does matter is the way it was credulously covered by the media. As Ars Technica notes:

There is sadly too little skepticism towards claims made about tech advancements, the same way my Aunt Joan had too little skepticism about claims made in timeshare seminars. AI advocates can make magical promises and click-hungry media outlets will dutifully write them up, the same pattern that has repeated in many tech fads over the past decade. It’s why we suffered through a year of NFT-pumping puff pieces, why it took a biochemist and a health and science reporter to uncover Theranos’s fraud, and why my Aunt Joan owns a timeshare that is also a meth lab.

Will the use of AI impact the creative industries over the next few years? Absolutely. However, the form this will take has not been determined, and anybody who claims to know is probably trying to sell you something (like a meth lab timeshare).

Tenet Goes Back to the Theater

As an unironic Tenet-head, I am thrilled that Warner Bros. is doing a weeklong rerelease in IMAX, where it will serve triple duty as a promotion for Dune: Part Two, a response to Oppenheimer’s huge IMAX box office, and as a makeup entreaty between director Christopher Nolan and WB, whose pandemic-era streaming release of Tenet led to bad blood with Nolan.

If you live close to a true IMAX theater like our local AMC at CityWalk, I can’t emphasize enough how incredible it is seeing a film on one, particularly ones shot partially on IMAX cameras like Tenet and Dune: Part Two.

As I’ve argued previously, it’s a viewing experience that simply cannot be replicated at home and thus one that Hollywood will increasingly lean into over the next few years as the hoped-for streaming savior fails to materialize. There’s a reason the screenings for an almost four year old film all look like this:

Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)

Here’s a round-up of cool links about Hollywood and technology:

Most consumers won’t shell out for ad-free Amazon Prime. (link)

2024 is going to be a rough year for TV. (link)

How Godzilla got his very first Oscar nomination. (link)