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It’s been more than two months since Tom Brady announced he was retiring from the NFL “for good” following a truly legendary career spanning 23 seasons where he cemented himself as the best quarterback to ever play the game.
Brady has been unable to resist the urge to imply he could, in fact, return to the league yet again, but it does seem like there’s a very good chance he’s permanently hung up his cleats.
Brady had already set his sights on his future before announcing his retirement after inking a deal to join Fox’s NFL broadcasting team (although a few notable names are skeptical he’ll actually end up in the booth when everything is said and done).
Earlier this year, reports surfaced that suggested the QB was eyeing a slightly more unexpected pivot thanks to rumors that asserted he was interested in taking a stab at stand-up comedy. They were eventually debunked, but Brady will be participating in what Netflix has dubbed The Greatest Roast of All Time (although jokes about one aspect of his personal life reportedly be off-limits).
We might never get a chance to see if Brady could hold his own if he got the chance to do a set at a comedy club, but Mad TV alum Will Sasso and writer Chad Kultgen tried to give us a glimpse at what it could look like when they harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to whip up an hour-long comedy special featuring a fake Tom Brady delivering some AI-generated jokes.
However, according to TMZ, the duo was forced to scrub it from the internet after lawyers representing Brady hit them with a cease and desist letter where they threatened to sue over the “unauthorized use” of his name, voice, and likeness (the two men argued it may be protected under parody law but opted to err on the side of caution by complying with the request to remove the computer-generated special the internet).
It’s safe to say AI still has plenty of work to do when it comes to figuring out the whole “comedy” thing when you consider it spit out so-called jokes like this:
“Someone sent me a message on Bumble. She said, ‘You look just like Tom Brady,’ and I said, ‘I am Tom Brady,’ she said, ‘Prove it,’ so I went to her house and let a little air out of all of her footballs.”
With that said, it’s still a shame we’ve been deprived of something so absurd.