{"id":734807,"date":"2026-06-30T12:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T12:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/734807\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T12:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T12:35:12","slug":"weird-al-yankovic-turned-down-an-ai-commercial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/734807\/","title":{"rendered":"“Weird Al” Yankovic turned down an AI commercial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlike the wanna be hackers, code crackers, and slackers wastin\u2019 time with all the chatroom yakkers, \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic has integrity. He\u2019s the type of guy who defrags his hard drive for thrills, doesn\u2019t read spam, and is pretty open about not wanting to be the \u201cposter boy for AI.\u201d Speaking to Syracuse.com ahead of a stop on his \u201cBigger & Weirder\u201d tour<\/a>, Yankovic made it clear that he\u2019s \u201cnot a fan of AI,\u201d and he\u2019s willing to put his money where his mouth is. Before leaving for tour, he was offered a \u201cnice pile of money\u201d to star in a commercial for what he was told was \u201cbusiness software that would increase productivity.\u201d What they neglected to tell him was that the product was for AI. \u201cThen a week before we\u2019re supposed to shoot it, I find out, oh, this is, it\u2019s AI,\u201d Yankovic says. \u201cAnd I thought, \u2018Oh no, I can\u2019t be the poster boy for AI, forget it.\u2019 So I felt bad about kind of pulling out at the last minute. But yeah, I\u2019m not, I\u2019m not down with that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Overhyped emerging technologies do tend to prey on artists looking to make a \u201cnice pile of money.\u201d Last year, Adam Ruins Everything star Adam Conover nearly ruined his credibility after briefly becoming a self-described \u201ccrypto shill\u201d<\/a> to hock OpenAI founder Sam Altman\u2019s Orb, which, assuming this thing still exists, pays users for biometric data via retinal scan while also confirming their humanity. More recently, Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet squandered his \u201cI want to be one of the greats\u201d goodwill by starring in a widely rejected ad for Kalshi prediction markets<\/a>. For Al, though, it really is all about the Pentiums, the price of which are skyrocketing thanks to the AI bubble<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlike the wanna be hackers, code crackers, and slackers wastin\u2019 time with all the chatroom yakkers, \u201cWeird Al\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-734807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}