‘Weird Al’ Yankovic refused to star in an advert for AI because he didn’t want to be “the poster boy” for the technology.
The parody musician has revealed that he agreed to star in an advertisement for business software but pulled out at the last minute when he discovered that it was an ad for artificial intelligence (AI).
The Like A Surgeon singer explained that he lost out on “a nice pile of money” because he didn’t want to be the face of AI.
“I’m not a fan of AI,” he told Syracuse.com. “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.'”
Yankovic continued, “And then a week before we’re supposed to shoot it, I find out, oh, this is, it’s 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.”
AI continues to be a hot topic in the entertainment industry. Scarlett Johansson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have also been vocal critics of the technology, while actresses like Demi Moore, Reese Witherspoon, and Sandra Bullock have urged people to understand it.
Recently, director Martin Scorsese backed an AI firm which has developed a way to help storyboard scenes, and Cate Blanchett announced the formation of a non-profit organisation designed to provide a human-consent framework for AI systems.
