The New Joke Thieves: AI Avatars Collect Millions of Views

Joke-stealing, a phenomenon that predates the art form of stand-up comedy, has entered a strange new age. The original setup, for years, was just a comic cracking a joke and performing it on stage. The infamous Comedy Store feud of the mid-2000s between Joe Rogan and alleged joke thief Carlos Manchia was one of the […]

Joke stealing, a phenomenon that predates the art of stand-up comedy, has entered a strange new era.

The original setup, for years, was just a comic cracking a joke and performing it on stage. The infamous Comedy Store feud of the mid-2000s between Joe Rogan and alleged joke thief Carlos Manchia is one of the most famous examples. More recently, with the rise of social media, comics have taken notice of influencers and major brands for repurposing their jokes as uncredited social media fodder. And now, with the advent of AI-powered stand-up clips, things have gotten even weirder. These clips are not just plagiarism. They often impersonate the comics who perform it, copying everything from their voices to their mannerisms and gestures. Many of these posts have received millions of views as the actual comics behind them try to take them down. Related News CNN and Google News on Artificial Intelligence "Experimental Features" News Comedian Alfred Robles to host first hour with Gabriel Iglesias as executive producer

Among those affected so far are New York-based stand-up trio Olivia Carter, Olga Namer and Natalie Cuomo. Watch on Deadline

Cuomo told Deadline that between seven and 10 times, jokes have been made about him on Instagram. Seeing a digitally created skin of a person - with their own tattoos - performing their material is "offensive and incredibly disturbing".

Carter's experience with artificial intelligence included seeing a viral one-liner about her request for a personal trainer — a segment she performed on The Tonight Show — rip several times. At first, the AI avatar seemed so fake that he could laugh at what was happening, he says.

"Then, I realized people thought he was real and it was his joke, and that's what bothered me."

Until recently, Carter said, he never thought about how technology could encroach on stand-up — which is essentially a live space. But now that he's faced with a very real "dystopian" scenario, he feels "powerless because there's not even anyone you can get mad at. It's just a void."

One wonders who are behind these accounts? And how to stop them?

The most disturbing example of plagiarism, for Namer, is a joke that took him nine years to perfect. A month after he found the right line and posted online with about 520,000 hits, the AI pushed it to nearly eight million. So he realized that although his stand-up was very personal and based on live experience, bots could reproduce the level of performance without any art or history behind it, without mentioning their sources, to be seen more.

"This girl who's a robot has over half a million followers, and it's like, if she was real, she could go on tour tomorrow," he says.

Namer recently recorded the joke for a performance on Comics Unleashed, which is set to air on October 26. He's now worried that when people see it, they'll think he's stealing content from a bot, not the other way around.

For comedians, there are several problematic layers to AI-based IP theft. First, of course, there's the commercial impact — the loss of authorship, credibility, and revenue from accounts that create their own jokes for clicks and a quick buck. For years, posting clips online has been essential to comedians' process of building an audience and selling tickets for their live shows. So while Cuomo thinks "people will be more protective of their content," it remains to be seen whether comics can successfully transition their audience to safer platforms without losing the opportunity to attract new fans.

Currently, going direct to the consumer through email lists on platforms like Punchup Live is one option. Meanwhile, posting online runs the risk of having jokes deleted not just once, but an unlimited number of times, across different accounts and types of bots.

"I think comics have always hated posting, and that's another reason we hate it," Carter says.

Beyond an economic and artistic transgression, however, there's a more sinister side to what's happening with AI stand-ups today. While there are men who have been influenced—George Brett Olson being one notable example—most seem to be influenced by women, whose likenesses are often exaggerated or distorted for sexual purposes.

As Cuomo sees it, the combination of "objectively funny" and already viral comedic content with a "hypersexual" persona and eye-catching artificial intelligence is a "perfect recipe" for bad actors to quickly grow their online accounts. While it takes years for comics to build a following, some AI accounts seen by Deadline have amassed hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of views in a matter of months.

"It's a little dirty, but my friend sent me a screenshot," Namer tells us. They were "creepy old men" who responded, "Oh, yeah, I'm going to give it a shot" to the AI bots that made his jokes come true.

In Carter's mind, there's an irony in who is the target of joke theft: "I think it's funny that most jokes from female comics get stolen because people on the Internet are always saying, 'Women aren't funny.' But it's like, "We take your jokes."

Three comedians we spoke to took similar actions in response to AI posts — reporting them to Meta and encouraging their friends and fans to do the same. Sometimes, they are removed, only for others to appear. In other cases, no apparent action is taken at all. Worryingly, at present, there seems to be no effective solution to this situation. Namer got the farthest — when a lawyer friend tried to file a lawsuit that resulted in a subpoena for the email address associated with the offending account — but found himself right back at square one when the account was suddenly deleted. Often, AI accounts will block both the comedians they steal from and others who call them out — even preemptively, so that the posts aren't visible to the comics they influence and can't take action in response through their own accounts.

Asked what he would say to those behind the AI accounts if he met one, Cuomo said it underscores the "humanity" behind stand-up art and the great effort it takes to create what's been stolen.

In a different way, Carter says, "I hate you and you're a bad person."

Meanwhile, Namer told the offender, "I dedicated my life to this and you're doing a not-so-good job. And you're also ruining the world."

"I say if you're going to steal, can you at least tag me? That would be nice."

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