AI Clones and Digital Grave Robbers: The Corporate Theft of Human Creativity
Artificial intelligence is creeping into every corner of entertainment, and the people in power want us to believe it’s just another tool, another harmless convenience, another step toward efficiency. But let’s be brutally honest about what’s happening. This isn’t about innovation. It’s about exploitation. It’s about control. It’s about studios and corporations realizing that if they can replace human artists with AI-generated knockoffs, they can cut out the messy business of paying people fairly, of negotiating contracts, of dealing with unions, and of acknowledging that actors, musicians, and performers are more than just interchangeable content machines.
When Ashly Burch discovered that an AI version of her Horizon character had been showcased in a leaked Sony tech demo, she had every reason to be furious. Sony insisted that the demo was just an internal experiment, that her voice wasn’t used, that no AI was being trained on her work. But if this was just an innocent test, why did it happen in the first place? Why was there an AI-generated Aloy at all? The reality is that these companies are already preparing for a future where they don’t have to pay human actors. They are testing the waters, pushing the boundaries, seeing what they can get away with before anyone stops them.
This is not speculation. It is happening now. Studios have already brought actors back from the dead, digitizing Peter Cushing to "star" in Rogue One decades after he died. Carrie Fisher, who left behind a legacy of strong, defiant performances, had her face stitched together with CGI so that The Rise of Skywalker could shoehorn her into a story she never got to approve. Whitney Houston has been resurrected as a hologram, singing to crowds she will never see, her likeness paraded around like a puppet. And some people have the audacity to call this a tribute. What tribute? What respect? This is a grotesque theft of an artist’s essence, a soulless simulation that strips them of their agency, reducing them to a product that can be sold long after their deaths. These companies aren’t honoring these legends—they are robbing them.
Before his death, James Earl Jones, the legendary voice of Darth Vader, licensed his voice so that AI can continue to conjure his booming baritone well beyond his lifetime. Bruce Willis, suffering from a degenerative condition, was reported to have signed over the rights to his own digital self, only for his representatives to later deny that he had actually sold himself away in full. The fact that we even have to clarify whether a person has signed away control of their own face, voice, and likeness for eternity should make everyone uneasy. This is not about collaboration between humans and AI. This is about the erasure of human artistry altogether.
This is exactly the nightmare “The Congress” warned us about. In that film, Robin Wright plays an actress who sells the rights to her digital self, allowing Hollywood to use her AI-generated image forever. At first, she’s well compensated, and the idea seems like an easy trade-off. But soon, the industry doesn’t need real actors at all. The business of storytelling becomes nothing but synthetic faces, synthetic voices, synthetic performances, and Wright, like every real performer before her, becomes irrelevant. That’s not science fiction anymore. That’s where we are headed.
And the people in charge know it. They are already gearing up for the fight, laying the groundwork to replace every actor, every musician, every performer who doesn’t agree to become a disposable asset. Why bother negotiating fair wages with a union when an AI-generated voice can do the job for free? Why work with living, breathing artists when a soulless replica can be conjured up at the push of a button?
The AI-generated George Carlin special is one of the most blatant and grotesque examples of AI being used to exploit, distort, and profit from a dead artist’s legacy without consent. This isn’t just about intellectual property or legal loopholes—this is about the hollow, soulless appropriation of a man’s work, philosophy, and identity for cheap entertainment.
George Carlin wasn’t just a comedian—he was an artist, a critic, a truth-teller who spent a lifetime perfecting his craft. Every joke, every routine, every shift in tone or pacing was intentional, shaped by his unique perspective, experiences, and intellect. He evolved over decades, refining his voice in response to the world around him. The idea that an AI, trained on his past work, could generate something that carries even a fraction of the weight or insight of a real Carlin performance is not just laughable—it’s an insult to his entire body of work.
When Kelly Carlin said, "No machine will ever replace his genius," she wasn’t just making a sentimental argument—she was making an essential point about what makes human creativity valuable in the first place. Carlin’s comedy wasn’t just a collection of words that followed a pattern. It wasn’t an algorithm that could be reverse-engineered, diced up, and repackaged. It was a reflection of his mind, his ability to observe, analyze, and articulate truths in a way that only he could. AI can regurgitate, AI can approximate, AI can synthesize—but it cannot think the way Carlin thought. It cannot feel anger, frustration, joy, or rebellion. It cannot look at the world and decide, "This is what needs to be said right now." It can only remix what has already been said, stripping it of all context, nuance, and humanity.
And here’s the real kicker: George Carlin would have absolutely eviscerated this. If he were alive, he would have torn this entire AI-generated spectacle to shreds. He hated corporate manipulation, he despised the commodification of everything, and he had no patience for mindless, soulless garbage being peddled as art. This is the kind of thing he would have gone on stage and obliterated with one of his legendary rants. The fact that he is no longer here to do that himself makes this all the more disgusting.
Beyond Carlin, this sets a dangerous precedent for entertainment as a whole. If comedians, actors, musicians, and performers are no longer necessary to produce new content, what does that mean for the future of storytelling? If a company can just feed old stand-up specials, old movie scripts, old song lyrics into a machine and pump out synthetic versions of artists long after they’re gone, then we are heading toward a future where entertainment is nothing more than a corporate-controlled, AI-driven recycling bin of cheap imitations and stolen voices.
And let’s not kid ourselves—this is not about paying tribute. It’s not about honoring legends or introducing them to new audiences. It’s about cutting costs and maximizing profit. It’s about owning a performer’s likeness forever, removing the human being from the equation so that corporations never have to deal with messy things like contracts, opinions, or fair pay ever again.
SAG-AFTRA’s legal battles over AI protections have never been more urgent. The fight over who owns an artist’s voice, face, and legacy is happening right now. If we don’t put strict, enforceable limits on AI-generated performances, we will soon live in a world where the entertainment industry is run entirely by machines, and human creativity will be just another resource to be extracted, stripped of meaning, and endlessly recycled.
This isn’t just an attack on an artist legacy or craft. It’s an attack on the fundamental integrity of art itself. And if we don’t fight back, we might wake up one day in a world where every comedian, every musician, every actor—living or dead—is nothing more than an AI-generated product, churned out by soulless corporations that no longer see any need for real people at all.
SAG-AFTRA is fighting to stop this before it’s too late, demanding protections that should be basic human rights—the right to control one’s own voice, one’s own face, one’s own image. They are pushing for laws like the ELVIS Act, which recognizes that a person’s voice is just as much a part of their identity as their physical likeness and cannot be stolen without consent. But these laws won’t be enough if we, as an audience, don’t demand better.
Because here’s the bottom line…if we don’t push back, the future of entertainment will be nothing but a wasteland of imitation. AI-generated movies, AI-generated music, AI-generated performances that mimic the real thing well enough to fool the casual observer, but without an ounce of the artistry, passion, or raw, human imperfection that makes creativity matter in the first place. And when that happens, when we’ve let the corporations gut storytelling to the point where everything is just an algorithmically generated content loop, it won’t just be the actors who suffer. It will be all of us.
The choice is simple…either we fight for the integrity of human storytelling now, or we resign ourselves to a future where creativity is nothing but a cold, calculated illusion, optimized for profit, stripped of soul, and churned out by machines that don’t care if the stories they tell mean anything at all.
