Emmure found themselves in hot water online after releasing an announcement video for their appearance at the Orlando, FL stop of this year’s Vans Warped Tour. The clip featured frontman Frankie Palmeri animated in a style reminiscent of The Simpsons, prompting backlash from fans who criticized the band for using AI instead of commissioning a human artist.
One user called out the band on social media: “All the money y’all make & you can’t hire an artist to make this, instead you use ai?” Palmeri fired back, explaining the reasoning behind the decision.
“I have an artist I work with regularly when I aim to make content like this,” Palmeri wrote. “Due to time restrictions, they weren’t able to produce the content without cutting corners. To be completely honest, I didn’t even want to make anything for this announcement. But, with respect to @vanswarpedtour and @kevinlyman I went ahead and made an announcement video clip. That’s all this is.”
He added: “You and countless other people have made such an incredibly, unnecessarily harsh critique about something so innocuous I’m actually shocked. Sorry I didn’t want to pretend to smile at a camera and talk about a ‘punk rock’ fest, that of which I never even asked to be a part of to begin with. After 9 albums, a dozen music videos, countless live shows, the fucking audacity to lambast me over 15 seconds of ‘artificial’ art is astonishing. Thanks.”
And sure, time constraints are time constraints. But the guy couldn’t have just done a quick voicevoer? Also, his comment about having to “talk about a ‘punk rock’ fest, that of which I never even asked to be a part of to begin with” feels kinda shitty. I guess the dude can take the money, but he’s still gonna complain.
Also, let’s not pretend that this is the thing that got Emmure in hot water. C’mon, Frankie.
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