An AI controversy is rocking the Swifties. The day after the release of The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift fans were sent on a scavenger hunt, during which they had to find Easter eggs hidden inside videos. On its face, this is nothing out of the ordinary for Swift, who has a history of hiding clues in music videos and leaving secret messages in her liner notes. However, this Easter-egg hunt led fans to videos that appear to have been made using AI, causing a big stir.
Swift’s fans are mad at the possibility that she, someone who has fiercely advocated for artists’ rights, would associate herself with AI videos. On the other hand, a smaller contingent think she might not have been involved with them at all. So, what’s going on here? Here’s what we know.
Okay, so what are these videos?
This past Saturday, if you searched “Taylor Swift” on Google, you were greeted with a burning heart emoji and a clue. “12 cities. 12 doors. 1 video to unlock,” the message read. If you clicked that emoji, letters appeared on the screen like shards of a shattered mirror, waiting to be deciphered. Those letters spelled out 12 cities around the world, in which orange doors bearing the number 12 and a QR code suddenly appeared. (The Life of a Showgirl, in case you didn’t know, is Swift’s 12th album.) Fans who scanned the QR code were then led to videos on YouTube Shorts, which contained a new set of clues to be decoded so that fans could “unlock” the lyric video for Swift’s lead single, “The Fate of Ophelia.”
All this for a lyric video? We don’t have time to unpack that. The videos, which appear to have been posted to Swift’s YouTube channel but have since been removed, did have that certain AI sheen to them. Let’s watch a few:
Not only did the videos display the kind of uncanny animation style we’ve come to expect from AI-generated content, they also had the kinds of mistakes that have become obvious tells. Fans and haters alike were quick to point out gibberish letters on a treadmill, a finger that went through a napkin, and a hanger that suddenly disappeared from a clothing rack, among other things.
Over on the Taylor Swift sub-Reddit, the official discussion post for the scavenger hunt read, “The videos are most likely AI generated. We typically do not allow AI content, but given that this is somehow related to the album push we are clearly going to keep this thread going.”
How are the Swifties feeling about this?
In the comments of the scavenger-hunt Reddit post, Swifties shared their frustrations about the singer seemingly using AI as part of her album promotion.
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“I’m really disappointed to see AI being used for these videos. It shows a total lack of awareness about the environmental impact,” one fan wrote, a sentiment that came up again and again in the comments. “I’m so disappointed. AI is literally destroying my industry and is basically going to ruin my job which is my absolute world. I cannot understand why someone who is so passionate about art and artists wouldn’t hire an artist and instead uses something that steals our work,” another Swiftie wrote. One very blunt fan simply wrote, “The use of AI is cheap, tacky, and anti art.”
Swift, who’s been vocal about artists owning their own work over the years, has previously gone on the record as anti-AI. Last year in September, a few weeks after Donald Trump shared an AI image of Swift as Uncle Sam endorsing his presidential bid, Swift officially endorsed Kamala Harris, writing in her announcement that Trump’s post “really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation.” Swift had previously been a victim of AI, when pornographic deepfakes of her circulated on X in January 2024.
So did she really do this?
While some fans are upset with Swift for the videos, others are questioning whether she or her team were involved at all. “Why hasn’t Taylor Nation posted anything about this door knocking. Why does it feel like it had nothing to do with them and entirely YouTube’s idea,” one fan wrote on the Reddit thread for the scavenger hunt. (Taylor Nation is Swift’s official social-media team, who are no strangers to fan activations like this.) “Is it just me or is it odd that there’s been zero taylor nation promo (not even confirming solutions on twitter or anything),” another fan asked.
It is curious that the videos are no longer up, though screenshots suggest they were originally posted to Swift’s official YouTube page. The promotion, which appears to be in collaboration with Google (which owns YouTube), comes just a few months after the tech company introduced Veo 3, its latest AI video-generation tool, and Flow, an AI filmmaking tool that harnesses all of Google’s AI tools.
So, did Swift do an AI-tinted collaboration with Google, or did Google just use the biggest cultural moment of the year to promote its new product? Neither Google nor Swift have addressed the controversy — a representative for Swift declined to comment, and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
