‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Turned Down an A.I. Commercial

Even “Weird Al” Yankovic has limits to parodies he finds funny. For instance, he is not amused by the internet’s “Weird A.I.” jokes. Sure, “AI” in capital letters kinda looks like “Al,” but as he told Syracuse.com on Monday, he’s “not a fan of AI.” In fact, he made it clear that you literally cannot pay him obscene amounts of money to feign interest in artificial intelligence.

When a company hawking AI-powered “business software that would increase productivity” (ever the gentleman, Yankovic refused to name-and-shame) offered him “a nice pile of money” to flog their wares in a commercial he said no.

Well, not at first. “I said, ‘Oh well, yeah, sure, I could do that,’” Yankovic said. “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.”

Yankovic, whose intelligence is authentic, is currently on his ongoing Bigger & Weirder tour, whose dates extend into the fall. And while the set lists remain sufficiently weird, one thing that’s inarguable is that the tour itself is bigger, since Yankovic, age 66, scheduled 90 dates in 2026. “We did 75 shows this year, and the fans weren’t sick of us yet,” Yankovic said in a 2025 statement when announcing the trek, “so we’re just going to keep on touring until they are!”