Some things are too weird even for parody king “Weird Al” Yankovic.
Ahead of a Syracuse, New York, stop on his “Bigger & Weirder” tour, Yankovic revealed to Syracuse.com in an interview published this week that he was offered “a nice pile of money” to appear in a commercial for business-focused software, but he backed out once he realized the ad would involve AI. “I’m not a fan of AI,” he said.
“I’m not going to mention any names, but they told me it was for a business. It was business software that would increase productivity,” Yankovic told the paper. “I said, ‘Oh well, yeah, sure, I could do that.’ And then a week before we’re supposed to shoot it, I find out this is AI. And I thought, ‘Oh no, I can’t be the poster boy for AI, forget it.’ So I felt bad about kind of pulling out at the last minute. But yeah, I’m not down with that.”
The satirist, who also told the paper he’s seen the “Weird AI” jokes that’ve popped up online, joins a legion of Hollywood performers who’ve rebuked the technology.
“Backrooms” director Kane Parsons has called AI “genuinely harmful,” while Emma Thompson has said the technology has induced “intense irritation“ into her creative process. Madonna also told Vogue Italia in an interview published last week that AI and algorithms run counter to the way artists should approach making art. (Though, it should be noted, Madonna’s “Confessions II” short film relied on multiple AI artists.)
“Algorithms and artificial intelligence are the opposite of taking risks and to me that is the opposite of making art,” she said.