Last year, Queen discussed new music and a potential Sphere residency. The legendary band unearthed the previously unreleased Christmas song "Not For Sale (Polar Bear)" for the holidays, and now Roger Taylor released a new solo album called Violence Insane In A Beautiful World. Meanwhile, Brian May says Queen's done with touring and that he's wary of doing an avatar show because of the AI usage that would be involved.
In a new interview with The Times, May said, "I made a decision 18 months ago that I didn't want to tour again. A close family friend died when we were in the States, so I said to my tour manager, 'I'll just nip home for a few days and come back.' She looked me in the eyes and said, 'You know you can't do that.' I love to play, I love to travel, but the trade-off is sacrificing your freedom. I have a wife [the actress Anita Dobson], grandchildren and a lot of astrophysics I want to do, so I'm thinking maybe 50 years is enough."
Taylor added, "We do want to do something fairly revolutionary." May expounded, "Last year I went to the Sphere, my juices started flowing and I sketched out a whole Queen show. I think an immersive experience is still on the cards and it could conquer time and space, but currently you can’t make it without AI and I have serious misgivings about that."
"Data centers are a massive evil and have to be fought," he continued. "My message to Andy Burnham is clear: stop it now before it’s too late. It’s trashing our future. We all like AI. It helps us write emails. It's even saved a few lives. But the harm it is bringing to the world is immense."
He previously gave Absolute Radio a similar a similar explanation when he was asked about avatar shows: "We looked at it very seriously, particularly after I saw the Sphere, and what the Eagles did with the Sphere, which I thought was amazing," he said. "I spent a lot of time planning out what I thought could be a Queen show. I've kind of backed off now because you can't do it without massive use of AI, with all the consequences of that."
"In some ways, I don't want to be stealing the work of other people, if you're stealing your own work, I'm not quite sure where I stand on it because you'd be stealing from the Queen ouvre, which maybe could be okay because its ours," he continued. "But at the same time, you're adding to the stresses that AI is putting on the world. So I don't know. I'm not so keen as I was."
In August, he also made a post on Instagram railing against AI. "I just had to share this with you guys," he wrote. "I asked Meta AI to show me what the cover of THE GAME album looked like. This is what it gave me ! Good job, eh ? So this is the kind of intelligence that will soon be ruling the world ??! Well, great. Maybe this is the time to realise WE ACTUALLY DON'T NEED AI !!! But I'm now very serious. I believe the price we are about to pay for this 'inevitable' development is way too high. We must not allow these hideous Data Centres to be built in the UK. They will destroy our beautiful country, like they are already destroying beautiful America. Dear Andy --- you must stop it now. Before it's too late. Bri"
