This as-told-to essay is based on an interview with George Brett Olson, one of several comedians who have lately called out AI accounts for ripping off their jokes. It’s been edited for length and clarity. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said he would look into what could be done about the issue and that the platform was invested in driving traffic to original content.
I started doing stand-up in 2021 after getting burned out from being a winemaker. I’d been doing live shows, and this joke I made about, ironically, AI stealing jobs went viral. The whole joke was about AI stealing jobs and people still blaming immigrants, which is very silly when the most powerful people were saying, “We’re literally coming to take all your jobs.”
Then a friend sent me the video of this lady doing the joke. He’s like, “AI is for real, for real, stealing your jokes.” It was basically me, in my clothes, but it’s a 42-inch butt. It’s just the pornification of women online. It was very strange.
I’d been doing that joke for a year. I thought of it after working out with my buddy, and we were talking, walking. It takes a lot of work to get a joke stage-ready. It’s a lot of repetition, tweaking, driving from place to place to perform. Comedy’s not easy. So it’s pretty sad to see it happen, especially when the AI comedians who are stealing jokes have more followers than the people they’re stealing from.
I asked the account behind the joke if she was real. She said yes. Then I asked, “Did someone help you do this?” And she just left me on read. She also left a comment saying, “Sorry, won’t happen again,” and removed a bunch of videos.
I’ve had a bunch of followers try to report it. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, replied and basically said, “Not all AI’s bad. We don’t know how we’re going to stop it, but people shouldn’t be able to steal. Seems like we should do something about that.”
[This was Mosseri’s exact comment: “I don’t think it’s practical for us to try and ban AI content from the platform. It’s gonna be harder and harder to identify, and it’s not all bad content (though yes, there is plenty of slop). But we are very invested in trying to drive more traffic to original content creators, and if an AI creator is ripping off content wholesale, it would be good for us to work out what we can do about that. I’m not sure what it would be, but I’ll make sure to talk to the team and look into it.”]
Max Brandt
I blame Meta, not the AI
I don’t blame someone for stealing. That’s just someone trying to make a buck with the tools they have available. We want to hold people responsible that do not have the mechanisms of power because we can’t hold an institution accountable.
I feel demoralized more by Meta’s response. The language that’s coming from all of them is that we’re powerless, and this is inevitable, and there’s nothing we can do. And it’s just not true. And you just have to sit, be powerless, which is demoralizing.
As a comedian, you just want to sell tickets to your shows, engage with live people. That’s why most of us post on social media — so people see that you’re funny so they come to your live shows. I do live shows every week.
If we flood the internet with agents, and we don’t know the difference anymore between what’s real and what’s not, this could be the death of the internet. Hopefully more people come to live shows. Because the one thing about AI comedians is: You can’t see them live.
