Speaking to Syracuse.com (via The Wrap), legendary parody singer and all-round decent guy “Weird Al” Yankovic has made clear he wants no part of AI and AI-generated music. Talking during his current Bigger & Weirder tour, Yankovic told the local site that he had recently turned down “a nice pile of money” because he “can’t be the poster boy for AI.”
Weird Al, who hasn’t released a new album since 2014, was explaining to Syracuse.com why he doesn’t feel compelled to create new multiple parody songs at this point, when the outlet brought up a current spate of AI-created parody “songs.”
“I’m not a fan of AI,” the musician said. “I was offered this commercial before the tour. 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. And they offered me a nice pile of money. I said, ‘Oh well, yeah, sure, I could do that.’ And then a wee before we’re supposed to shoot it, I find out, oh, 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, I’m not down with that.”
What a rare treat to hear an artist in such a prominent position taking such a solid stand, and not just in principle but in practice. Not least after the misery that was Reese Witherspoon’s apparently unsponsored Instagram post demanding women “keep up” with the wretched technology, or news that both Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine have sold their voices to AI company ElevenLabs. And who else is still struggling to forget Bella Ramsey’s Apple AI ad that was such bullshit it had to be pulled?
Following 2022’s Daniel Radcliffe-starring pseudo biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Yankovic says he’s now working on a Broadway musical called Dare to be Stupid: The Weird Al Musical, co-created with Moulin Rouge!‘s Alex Timbers and Beetlejuice: The Musical‘s Scott Brown and Anthony King, once more using the parodist’s most famous songs. And heck, let him milk them for all they’re worth: he’s earned it.