First of all, kudos to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and its esteemed host for putting together a very funny segment imagining what Tucker Carlson’s show would be like if it were hosted by a soulless automaton. Or a different soulless automaton, rather. Secondly, I’ve seen The Terminator and almost every other dystopian sci-fi movie or TV show in which robots take over the planet, and as much as I love comedy, maybe it’s time to pump the brakes. Are we really sure we want to play around with this tech? If SkyNet becomes self-aware while Tucker AI is connected to the network, the internet will transform overnight into one giant bow tie fetish porn aggregator. Is that really what we want?
On his Wednesday night show, Colbert had some fun with the Fox Files—the big tranche of documents recently released in connection with Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network. And perhaps the highlight of his monologue involved the unveiling of Tucker AI—a voice generator that converts Carlson’s texts to an eerily on-the-nose simulacrum of his voice.
Watch:
COLBERT: “Even though Tucker has publicly defended the former president, the court filings show that on Jan. 4, 2021, Carlson wrote privately, ‘I hate him passionately.’ What? You, what? You hate him? But talking about him is the thing that pays your big salary. This is like finding a text from the infomercial guy that says, ‘Someone please get me paper towels! This stupid ShamWow just kind of moves it all around.’”
Colbert then shows a photo of Carlson yucking it up with Trump at what one can only assume is either a Saudi mass execution or a terminally ill 6-year-old’s first piano recital. It’s a weird spectacle, and not just because it also includes Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s just that, well, this isn’t generally how folks react to people they loathe:
Then Colbert trots out Tucker AI, and somehow it comes off even creepier than flesh-based Tucker.
COLBERT: “These filings reveal all sorts of damning private communications from Tucker Carlson, but these communications—see, they’re just texts. There’s no audio. But The Late Show has used cutting-edge AI technology, and this is true, we created a fake Tucker Carlson soundalike to read his actual words from his actual texts like when he actually wrote this about the former president.”
TUCKER AI (VOICEOVER): “That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”
COLBERT: “Wow. Wow, I know that really sounds like Tucker’s voice, but that’s not really him speaking. And the way you can tell that’s not really Tucker is that he was saying what he actually believes on TV.”
Oh, snap. Crackle and pop, as well.
Earlier in the video (at about the :45 mark), Colbert remarks on Fox News pooh-bah Rupert Murdoch’s frank assessment of Trump as a leader who has become “increasingly mad.”
COLBERT: “Publicly, Rupert Murdoch’s network has been totally supportive of the former president and his election lies, but private messages from November of 2020 show Murdoch fretting that the ex-president was going ‘increasingly mad.’ Increasingly mad! I’m just curious, Rupey. At what point in his madness might it occur to you that the most powerful man in the world has grown increasingly mad? I believe the scale goes ‘mad,’ ‘increasingly mad,’ ‘inciting a coup,’ ‘strangling his Secret Service driver,’ and ‘dinner with Kanye.’”
There’s a lot more—including a great Scooby-Doo bit—but I don’t want to spoil it all. I’ll make a deal with you: If you watch the entire segment, I promise never to write the words “flesh-based Tucker” again. Enjoy.
And thank you, Mr. Colbert. You are, as ever, a delight.
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
