{"id":350718,"date":"2026-09-19T00:26:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T00:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/350718\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T00:26:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T00:26:26","slug":"brian-may-halts-queen-avatar-show-plans-over-ai-concerns-calls-for-data-center-moratorium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/350718\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian May Halts Queen Avatar Show Plans Over AI Concerns, Calls for Data Center Moratorium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brian May has backed away from plans for a Queen avatar show because of concerns about artificial intelligence and its environmental impact.<\/p>\n<p>The guitarist spoke with the UK&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Co2NRE5LCnk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Absolute Radio<\/a> on Sept. 15. He spent months planning but walked away from the whole thing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We looked at it very seriously, particularly after I saw the [Las Vegas] Sphere and what the Eagles did with the Sphere, which I thought was amazing,&#8221; May told Absolute Radio. &#8220;And I spent a lot of time planning out what I thought could be a Queen show. I&#8217;ve kind of backed off now because you can&#8217;t do it without massive use of A.I., with all the consequences of that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>May remains conflicted about whether using AI to recreate Queen&#8217;s performances is ethically and environmentally justified. &#8220;I don&#8217;t wanna be stealing the work of other people. If you&#8217;re stealing your own work, I&#8217;m not quite sure where I stand on it, because you would be stealing from the Queen oeuvre, which maybe is OK, because that&#8217;s ours,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But at the same time, you&#8217;re adding to the stresses that A.I. is putting on the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Brian May wants UK leaders to halt construction of new data centers. These buildings destroy neighborhoods and hurt nature, he argues.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I hate the business of these data centers coming and destroying our countryside,&#8221; he said. &#8220;This is a big threat, in my opinion, and it will only get bigger and bigger and bigger. The more you give, the more they&#8217;ll take, and they destroy communities.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The guitarist hasn&#8217;t closed the door completely on avatar shows. &#8220;I think it would be great to have a permanent place where people could go and feel like they&#8217;re seeing us play live in our peak, maybe all over the world, maybe at all points in time,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The doors are open, but I don&#8217;t know if we&#8217;re gonna walk through.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brian May has backed away from plans for a Queen avatar show because of concerns about artificial intelligence&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[664,9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-350718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-brian-may","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}