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Behind the artifice of artificial intelligence, the bots are not coming to replace us
It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity that made this comedy newsletter arrive so late.
It’s very trendy this summer to wonder if billionaires have killed the social media era, if the Internet as a whole has succumbed to “enshittification,” and if the final death knell for online education is AI.
In the case of AI, I’ve reported already in the past year that AI isn’t coming for comedy anytime soon. Even if Sarah Silverman is suing the biggest AI developers (more on that below).
Last year, I asked Kurt Braunohler about the “JOKEATRON” AI featured in his 2022 stand-up special, Perfectly Stupid, and learned “The JOKEATRON is not a threat to anybody. Because it’s so bad at its job. I find it exhausting to use because you have to comb through 500 jokes, and combing through 500 jokes to find the one that works is very difficult and arduous.”
Last month, I relayed the news that “more than 90 percent of the 1,008 jokes generated by ChatGPT were essentially the same 25 jokes.”
Last week, while trying to increase the accuracy on my ongoing accounting of new stand-up specials, I discovered that a Netflix “stand-up comedy special written entirely by bots” wasn’t written by bots at all.
The video above was released two years ago this week, and has accumulated more than 2.9 million views on YouTube. The description: “We worked with Keaton Patti to make a bot watch over 400,000 hours of stand up comedy and then write its own special. Here is the best it could do.”
A second video appeared in February 2022.
Something about the voice introducing the fake comedian might sound familiar?
Would you believe it’s the same comedian, actor and director who starred in one of this year’s funniest viral TikToks?
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David C. Ebert came up through the UCB Theatre in the 2010s, performing on house sketch (Maude) teams, and showing up on MTV shows and TV commercials, and now directing TV ads and other campaigns — this year alone, he’s done spots for Hilton hotels featuring Brandi Carlile and Paris Hilton, as well as for Heinz this summer.
I saw Ebert’s name attached as director of these Netflix Is A Joke “bots” spots (not on YouTube, but elsewhere), so I asked him about them last week.
He told me: “This series was started years before the AI explosion, when AI was a joke and not an existential threat. There is very little actual AI in it. The scripts are written by my old friend from UCB Keaton Patti, who currently writes for Kimmel and created a name for himself posting fake bot scripts on Twitter. He's done other fake bot things on twitter and duped people multiple times.”
Ebert then worked with an animator and sound designer to play with how bots might misinterpret words for the audio and visual interpretations.
“The only true AI comes in the voice performances, of which I recorded an hour of generic reading from myself and other friends and converted those to text-to-speech algos via the program Descript.”
Ebert told me he since has worked with actual AI programs for other clients, and he’s also worked with Patti on developing a separate bot series, “but what felt timely when we wrote it a year ago is now already dated. With no buyer on the horizon it's hard to see myself funding the project through animation only to have it sit on Vimeo until someone like you comes along to find it.”
In the meantime, it’s at least somewhat refreshing to know that stand-up comedy will continue to be conveyed by actual humans. Even if some of those humans seem to be reciting the same artificial talking points.
New Netflix Metrics Benefit Stand-Ups
Netflix adjusted its weekly Top 10 lists a month ago, and the streaming giant’s new math already has proven quite beneficial for stand-up comedians.
The new metrics now rank TV and movies on Netflix by “views” instead of “hours viewed,” with a view defined by dividing those hours viewed by the running time of the movie or episodes. This invariably helps stand-ups in the TV rankings since their specials are singular episodes — and in the first two weeks of the adjusted rankings, comedians cracked the Top 10 each week.
For June 12-18, 2023, Amy Schumer: Emergency Contact ranked ninth with 2.4 million views (2M hours divided by 51 minutes). All of the other shows on that week’s last had accumulated between 10.8 million hours (Never Have I Ever: Season 3) and 58.7 million hours (Black Mirror: Season 6).
For June 19-25, 2023, 85 South: Ghetto Legends ranked sixth with 3 million views (2.7M hours divided by 54 minutes). The other shows in the Top 10 that week ranged from 5.9 million hours (Black Mirror: Season 1) and 60.4 million hours (Black Mirror: Season 6).
Let’s see where Tom Segura’s Sledgehammer shows up this week.
R.I.P. Alan Arkin
Alan Wolf Arkin (March 26, 1934 – June 29, 2023) won an Academy Award for his role as the grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine, and received three other Oscar nominations (for 1966’s The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming; 1968’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter; and 2012’s Argo), six Emmy nominations, a Tony Award and another Tony nomination. That Tony came for acting in “Enter Laughing,” a play based on a novel by Carl Reiner, in 1963, when Arkin was part of The Second City. He’d arrived on Broadway from Chicago, where he said the legendary comedy troupe saved him, as he discovered his voice as an actor after first finding success as a singer-songwriter with The Tarriers, whose “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” was made even more famous by Harry Belafonte.
800 Pound Gorilla Media Taps The Laugh Button
Back in the pre-pandemic era, The Laugh Button was an offshoot of The Syndicate, an entertainment marketing agency, that specialized in hyping comedians, comedy shows and comedy albums. They first partnered with me in 2010 to make some videos with comedians during their CMJ showcases at Comix, where I filmed sit-downs with Hannibal Buress, Reggie Watts, Big Jay Oakerson, and Julian McCullough.
The Laugh Button’s Laugh Network also sold ads for The Comic’s Comic until the end of 2019, when the market for website advertising disappeared. Around that time, The Laugh Button partnered up with Robert Kelly’s Riotcast podcast network, and also got into making and releasing albums themselves — earning a Grammy nomination for Lewis Black’s Thanks for Risking Your Life.
On June 29, Matt Kleinschmidt announced that 800 Pound Gorilla Media had become sole owners of The Laugh Button, putting their editorial and production assets under the 800pgm banner. Here’s wishing Matt the best in his future endeavors.
Industry News and Notes
Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat Productions officially revived BET’s ComicView after a nine-year hiatus, filming new episodes over the weekend at Resorts World Las Vegas during Hartbeat Weekend. Mike Epps hosts the new season (and EPs with Hart), with high-profile appearances by Tommy Davidson, Tacarra Williams, Tony T. Roberts, Bresha Webb, D.C. Young Fly, and Tip “T.I.” Harris. in addition to a new batch of up-and-comer comedians.
What else is new?
Sarah Silverman is suing ChatGPT. Wait, what? She’s one of three authors who sued OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s LLaMA in U.S. District Court, alleging copyright infringement for using their works, such as Silverman’s “The Bedwetter,” to help train their AI programs. (related evidence filed in court)
Jamie Foxx was spotted on a boat in Chicago over the weekend, his first public appearance since his still-undisclosed hospitalization in April.
Just For Laughs announced Steph Tolev will deliver this year’s “Canadian Keynote” at the Montreal fest on July 26.
Rob Crabbe, a former EP on The Late Late Show, has become showrunner on The Talk, CBS’s daytime talker.
ABC hasn’t officially renewed Home Economics for a fourth season yet, but the network did extend options on the sitcom’s cast.
But Showtime has jettisoned Seasoned, a potential comedy starring Mandy Patinkin and his wife, Kathryn Grody, as the network continues to subtract programming amid its merger with Paramount+.
The TCAs, awarded by the TV Critics Association, nominated Abbott Elementary,Re Barry, Poker Face, Reservation Dogs, Shrinking, The Bear, The Other Two, and What We Do In The Shadows for best comedy; Quinta Brunson, Ayo Edebiri, Harrison Ford, Bill Hader, Janelle James, Natasha Lyonne, James Marsden, and Jeremy Allen White for individual achievement; and The Amber Ruffin Show, A Black Lady Sketch Show, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Saturday Night Live, and Ziwe for achievement in variety talk or sketch.
Last Week’s Specials
New on Netflix
July 4 — Tom Segura: Sledgehammer (my review)
New on Peacock
July 6 — Kevin Hart: Reality Check (my review)
New on Amazon for sale/rent
July 1 — Eddie Ifft : Manchild
New on Vimeo On Demand
June 29 — Tanya Lee Davis: Unstoppable Me
New on Dry Bar
July 4 — Don Garrett: Nice Guys Finish Worst
July 6 — Vikram Balaji: Least Favorite Kid
***New on 800 Pound Gorilla Media
*** Whilst compiling my midyear roundup, it was brought to my attention that 800PGM often released specials first exclusively for rent/sale on their website, before making them free on YouTube a month or so later. But that meant I might’ve also overcounted in January, and sure enough, my early accounting included re-releases from 2021-2022 by Andy Andrist, Brian Posehn, and Drew Lynch.
So to catch up…
June 13 — Helen Bauer: Little Miss Baby Angel Face UK (coming to YouTube July 13)
June 20 — Huge Davies: The Carpark SCOTLAND (coming to YouTube tbd)
June 22 — Sean McLoughlin: So Be It UK (coming to YouTube July 27)
New on YouTube
June 29 — Jack Baker: Jack Baker’s Disease
June 30 — Sam Serrano: Beautifully Unconventional
June 30 — Radu Isac: Keep Coughing ROMANIA
July 4 — Shane Todd: All American
July 5 — Vivek Samtani: Thankyou, Mom and Dad INDIA
July 6 — J-L Cauvin: Tall Boy
July 7 — Jacob Balshin: Thirty and Breathing Funny CANADA
July 7 — Aakash Mehta: Nasty INDIA
July 7 — Keith Lowell Jensen: What I Was Arrested For (via 800 Pound Gorilla Media) (previously livestreamed premiere on 800PGM in May)
The 85 South Comedy Show channel also re-released Leonard Ouzts’ The Big Joker on their YouTube, following initial SVOD release on their platform.
THIS WEEK: 16
LAST WEEK: 7 (+3 adjusted 800pgm) = 10
THIS MONTH (JULY): 12
JUNE: 48+4+3= 55
RUNNING TOTAL for 2023: 362 through Q2 + 12 July = 374
Fun Things To Do In NYC
Union Hall’s where it’s at this week: Phoebe Robinson and Calise Hawkins on Monday; Jena Friedman on Tuesday; Drew Michael on Thursday.
Would you like to promote your comedy show or album or special or whatnot on this newsletter???
Please let me know and we can work out the details.
Thanks for reading!
Thank you for coming to the show Saturday. Great to see you!