AI has come for comics on stage and in The New Yorker

By design, large language models plagiarize because for generative AI to work at the scale we’re told it must, the LLM must ingest everything it can to spit out something similar. As the technology has proliferated, it has found a home on social media, where relaxed moderation policies meet an endless appetite for more content. As we’ve seen time and again, once something hits social media, its creator no longer owns it. In the past, that could mean an idea becoming a meme that’s outside the creator’s control. But now, much of what people post becomes material for AI to ingest and regurgitate. That’s what’s happening to comedian George Brett Olson, who realized an AI-generated woman was stealing his jokes, movements, and even the color of his outfit from a video of his stand-up set. 

Caught by writer Nate Bowling in his Takes & Typos newsletter, Olson’s video breaks down how Tiffany Sloan, a fake woman with massive physical features very different from his own, uses his jokes and movements as motion capture, like he was Andy Serkis and “she” was Gollum. Sloan’s creators are stealing all the way to the bank, amassing a massive following on others’ hard work (Olson isn’t the only comedian it copied) and directing viewers to the AI’s OnlyFans page. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t violate Meta’s terms of service. Even weirder, it’s telling Olson’s joke about AI taking everyone’s jobs. Or as Bowling succinctly puts it: “A working comedian had his joke stolen by an anonymous person who created a big-butted hot girl AI avatar, which then stole his jokes and dozens of others’, monetized the theft, ran an adult content side hustle, and somehow managed to violate none of Meta’s terms of service.”