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Taylor Swift can't shake off rumors of AI use [1]

['Séamus Bellamy']

Date: 2025-10-07  

You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain. It could be that Taylor Swift has decided to veer way the hell into the latter. Indulge with me, if you will, in the delicious potential irony of her using artificial intelligence—technology that's built on the stolen labour of creatives—when she's been hellbent on the control and preservation of her own work:

Taylor Swift once said, "You deserve to own the art you make." Apparently, that doesn't apply to the millions of artists who have had their works fed into the data wood chipper that is generative AI tools. In the lead-up to the release of the world's biggest pop star's latest album, "Life of a Showgirl," fans were treated to easter egg videos designed to build hype. Instead, sharp-eyed Swifties started to spot what appeared to be AI-generated imagery within the teaser videos, and launched full Swift-vestigations into the situation.

Allegedly, the fingerprints of AI can be found smudging up several promotional videos for her new record. To view the videos, people needed to locate an orange door in several cities and scan a QR code. I can imagine that her fans would have been thrilled to find those doors. However, it appears that a number of them were less than pleased with the fact that something seemed off in the videos. This one, uploaded by Swifties in London, England, is one of the promos under suspicion. Twitter X user @HappiiFunTime claims that if you look closely, one of the hangers disappears as the camera pans and zooms in. And you know what? They're right. Watch the top right corner of the screen, near the end of the film. The hanger goes poof:



This is AI, watch the hanger randomly disappear



Taylor swift a billionaire, is using AI for promotion. https://t.co/OyzamoLdtQ pic.twitter.com/f4rp7fWBCT — Happi (@HappiiFunTime) October 4, 2025

So, let's say the promo was made using AI. Swift either knew about it being used to in the video's production and was fine with it. She's a busy professional. This leads to one of two conclusions.

She's the hardworking musician that she claims to be. Swift watches over her empire and art, careful to see that it all stays under her careful control. She vets her staff, what they do and, every iota of her online presence. She cares so much about how her work is being used by the record companies that she signed with that she used her own money to buy the rights to her songs back. Alternatively, she's full of shit: The earnest belief she claims in artists maintaining control of their creations only applies to her. It's less expensive to use AI than it is to employ a crew to create promotional videos. If that means that other artists' work is stolen to train the tools that help her bottom line, so be it.

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/10/07/taylor-swift-cant-shake-off-rumors-of-ai-use.html

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