The AI 'comedians' stealing jokes wholesale

'It feels incredibly violating'

Social media parasites are shamelessly stealing comedians' material and remaking it with AI-generated avatars.

Anonymous joke thieves mostly target female comedians, putting their work into the mouths of fake characters in revealing clothing as ‘thirst traps’.

While the footage is often AI-generated, comments suggest many viewers believe they are talking to a real person.

One of the most prolific plagiarist accounts is Aylen Skye. A Google query describes her, via the search giant’s Gemini AI, as if she were real, describing her as a ‘viral social media persona known for casual comedy skits, street interviews, and awkward or chaotic real-world scenarios’.

Several of her clips have hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok. The most popular, a rip-off of an old skit from The Sketch Show that originally had Tim Vine asking a waitress played by Karen Taylor for a 'quickie', only be told by Jim Tavare 'it's probnounched quiche'. That has more than 660,000 views – but most of Aylen Skye's output is stand-up clips.

American comic Julia Jasunas – one of the comedians targeted – told Chortle: ‘It’s incredibly unsettling that someone is using scantily clad AI-generated women to perform stolen jokes and generate profit from views and engagement, then funnel people toward an OnlyFans account for additional profit, all for a woman who doesn’t even exist! No wonder there’s a male loneliness epidemic.

’It still feels incredibly violating to have your work taken and used without permission, then to add insult to injury, feel completely unsupported by the platform it’s posted on.’

While getting no support from Facebook and Instagram owner Meta, Jasunas said she knew of other comedians who had their accounts taken down for falsely being accused of plagiarism, when it was them who originated the jokes spreading online.

Meta did not respond to this website’s request for comment.

Ironically, Jasunas said she originally started posting her stand-up on social media to protect her work from being stolen, because 'posting your own material gave you a timestamp attaching you to your work’.

She added: ’Social media has also created a culture where people hide behind their screens and feel invincible. The person who created this AI account (because it is a person abusing these tools) actually trolled my response video and had the gall to insult the very joke they stole and are profiting off of

‘And, ironically, I use a stage name and have struggled to get verified as a legitimate working comedian with actual credits, yet a blatantly fake, AI-generated account with stolen IP managed to get verified, no problem.’

Jasunas added that as AI spreads ‘we need to seriously address who owns the creative work it’s using and how artists can be compensated. There needs to be accountability when that work is stolen’.

Here are just some of the many examples Chortle has identified, or called out by the original comdian.