Hey, everyone. It's Anthony Itano here again, continuing to be disappointed by all of the AI slop that's out there that seemingly is being embraced more and more and more by everybody and anybody for some reason, despite the fact that it's bad and tacky, and in some cases, just disrespectful.

@iamsloanesteel Last night I went to a Rod Stewart concert and he played this “tribute” to Ozzy. The selfie sticks in heaven?!! XXXTentacion?! #ozzyosbourne #rodstewart #XXXTentacion ♬ original sound - Sloane Steel

Case in point, a recent Rod Stewart performance where Rod Stewart, God, the man, the myth, the legend himself, decided to do a bit of an Aussie tribute in the midst of the show, which is fine, is fair, is all well and good. I mean, Ozzy Osborne, total legend. Everybody loves him. Why wouldn't you want to tribute the guy?

But he did so in a series of AI visuals where Ozzy is alongside a bunch of other passed-away artists, and they're all smiling into a camera that, I guess, is being held by a selfie stick in heaven. Honestly, if there's one thing I hope is not in heaven, it's selfie sticks. If there's anything that would convince me that we are actually in the bad place, it would be selfie sticks.

And I'm actually doubly sure that we are currently in the bad place right now after seeing these images of Ozzy smiling alongside Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, Prince, and, broadly enough, XXXTentacion. Having Ozzy chilling and having a great time with his contemporaries is one thing, but I don't know, I think XXXTentacion just feels even weirder.

And again, obviously, honestly disrespectful not only to Ozzy, but just literally everyone involved. We don't fully know and understand the personal feelings that everyone in this video may have had toward Ozzy at any point in their lives, and vice versa. And on top of it, none of them are around currently to consent to being depicted in this way.

So it just feels fucking brain-dead and moronic to plaster this up on a screen for all to see as if this is actually celebrating Ozzy's memory in any significant way, as if you couldn't just simply effectively do that by performing one of his songs. And I don't know, if you want to see images of Ozzy, there are tons of photos and videos of the man out there.

He's literally one of the most well-photographed and videotaped rock stars of all time, one of the first, I would say, reality TV stars ever. So it's not like we're really strapped for visuals and images of Ozzy. If you want the audience to see him and get a little nostalgic as they're hearing you tribute him on stage, there are options other than making fake shit about him out of thin air.

But this is not the only instance as of late of a major star using or being depicted in some terrible AI garbage because apparently, the one and only Raekwon, who just dropped a brand new record, by the way, and there are a lot of good tracks on it, including a "600 School", one of the major cuts off the record featuring Ghostface Killah and Method Man.

It's a banger of a track with solid verses from each of them. But seemingly, Raekwon's team is promoting the song with a music video now that is wholly AI-generated. Even in its best moments, the whole thing looks like a bad trailer for a Grand Theft Auto ripoff. I would try to pull apart the narrative of this thing, but because it's AI-generated and AI isn't actually thinking of the pacing or how much anything you're seeing actually makes sense, it's difficult.

What is being depicted is like an elaborate heist of sorts. And you see Raekwon, Ghost, and Method Man shown in a myriad of different ways, which just come across as very uncanny and awkward and unflattering and maybe a little too cartoony. Actually so cartoony that if you were going to do something like this, why not just get an animator to make it? You have bits where Method Man is one of the guys in on the heist, but then also for whatever random reason, he's dressed as a cop. Is he playing both sides? Is he the man on the inside? How did we jump from one to the other?

Also, a good deal of this heist and getaway is done in a frigging Cybertruck of all things, which I can't imagine a more uncool getaway vehicle than a Cybertruck, because not only are you not out running the cops in that shit, but it's one of the most instantly recognizable vehicles on the road. Nobody's escaping from a massive heist in a Cybertruck. So not only are there aspects of the video that narratively and conceptually just seem a little bit too outlandish, but there's a lot of technical details and issues that just take you out of any bit of immersion you could have watching this thing.

There are shots and segments where the frame rate gets super freaking choppy, moments where the frame will zoom in on a particular shot or part of a shot, and it'll look very, very fuzzy because obviously, none of this is real or handmade footage. As a result, you're just blowing up a blurry AI image. There are also moments where they're trying to show Raekwon, Method Man, and Ghost rapping on screen as they're performing along with the song, but the mouths never quite sync up with what the music is doing.

Look, I get that this is not the biggest moment of Raekwon's amazing career, dropping this new album. And he's dropping the record through Mass Appeal, which is a great label, obviously, but he probably didn't go into this thing with the biggest budget in the world. But a video with him and Meth and Ghost just together, wrapping the song in a few different settings and so on and so forth would have looked infinitely cooler than what is going on here.

I've seen Ghostface kill it perform recently. The guy still looks cool as hell. Method Man is out there constantly acting and doing all sorts of sidequests, and the guy still looks amazing for his age. And I just saw a video the other day of Raekwon performing his legendary bars from "C.R.E.A.M.", and the dude still sounds great, looks great.

Again, just seeing these guys today as they are alive and living and continuing to be legends would be way cooler than this, especially when this music video is peppered with bad shots. Once more, we just continue to just be buried in this toxic AI nonsense. And as of right now, I'm just sitting here waiting for the fever to break, especially since none of it's reflecting well on the very established artists who are using it. But there you go. Let me know what you think about all this in the comments. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano, AI, blah, forever.