So I came across this new dudesy video titled "George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead" and it put me down a weird rabbit hole. I'm not a Carlin super fan but I know some of his famous bits and respect his work and maybe that's the perfect setup for watching this because... I'm honestly blown away. I planned on listening to 3 minutes of it to make fun of stupid AI but ended up letting it run for the entire hour and actually laughed quite a bit. It all makes sense. It does sound like him. I don't know how much editing went into it, how much prompting and discarded material. I especially don't know if it just dug up old jokes somewhere else and copied them. But still.

It feels like we just had awkward AI-wordsalad experiments and things like the infinite Seinfeld stream which was fun in a so-bad-it's-good kinda way but... I mean, it obviously was bad. The funny part was that it was unpredictably bad.

But only a year later we're having some uncanny valley shit. I looked it up and apparently this started with a comedy podcast with an AI co-host which produced a clip for a fictional Tom Brady standup routine which turned out popular enough to get them sued, apparently.

There's this part in the fake Carlin special where he talks about the future of entertainment being 24-hour streams where an AI comedian comments on daily news events in real time or something and I can't say I wouldn't watch that. Just to see what it's like. But I also get people calling it disgusting. It kinda is. I get [his daughter says "machine will ever replace his genius"](machine will ever replace his genius), she's right of course. But that video got close IMO.

You can still point at little flaws here and there with AI generated content but with this trend, it will be 3 or 5 years before we get perfectly polished content machines that don't trip over any of the easy and obvious stuff. What place would such content have in the entertainment industry?

What do you guys think?

Even before the pandemic I've been struggling to keep up with stand-up comedy. Feels like there was a real sweet spot in the 2010s where you'd constantly find new and interesting acts on YouTube, comedy central, late shows and even a few American panel shows. But it's only gotten harder as most shows and streaming services only really push big or topical names.

It feels like in the States, the mainstream comedy is getting very one-note with the tone of rich people problems and call backs to older material; while the more up and coming stuff is needlessly provocative and vulgar. And there's a underlying obsession with the idea of cancel culture, almost like they're trying to bait themselves into the press.

I love British stuff too but big names are focusing on other projects. At least there's panel shows where they can showcase new material and comics.

And the global comedy space is interesting but a lot is lost in language and cultural translation.

Maybe theres a vibrant underground scene of weird, surrealist comedy and I'm just held back by the big streaming platforms? Or I've just become picky old man now?

So suggestions for interesting or new comedy that's worth a watch?