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.
The alleged generative AI material appeared in a series of short promotional videos. Those videos were accessed via QR codes that were posted on 12 orange doors located in 12 different cities. The videos, originally uploaded via YouTube Shorts, are no longer available, but Gizmodo reviewed purported re-uploads found online. Each video featured letters which, when put together, provided the phrase, “You must remember everything, but mostly this, the crowd is your king.” But the mystery that Taylor’s king took more of an interest in seemed to be, “Why do some of these videos look a little off?”
No one from Swift’s camp has confirmed in any way the use of generative AI in the promotional videos, but there is certainly enough on-screen to create suspicion. Users have pointed out clipping and disappearing imagery in some videos that suggest that what you’re seeing is created with generative AI. The videos appear to be a part of a partnership with Google, according to a report from The Tennessean, which covered the orange door reveal that appeared in Nashville. Gizmodo reached out to Google for comment regarding its involvement in the videos, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
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
Others have called out some lettering that appears in different shots that have a distinct AI-generated quality to them, in that they are largely nonsense. A treadmill that appears in one video, for instance, has buttons that read “MOP,” “SUOP,” and “NCLINE,” with letters that are curved and blurred in ways that suggest there’s something more than just some wear and tear on the buttons. Another image, a notebook, also appears to contain made-up lettering that a human would be unlikely to make, on account of the fact that a human knows what letters are.
this is ai + either taylor is the powerful woman that has power over every aspect of her art (music, promo etc)so she definitely approved this or she doesn’t let’s not switch narratives only when it benefits taylors ok? pic.twitter.com/mCkplSDuxw
— fifo | the life of a showgirl 🍂🍁 (@closureblvd) October 5, 2025
Not a criticism of Taylor herself, moreso her team/company…. the lettering on this treadmill is a very well known indicator of AI generated text. pic.twitter.com/qCDzoCkufW
— katie ❤️🔥 (@13poetsdept) October 4, 2025
Generative AI systems are notoriously bad at generating text because, while these systems have been trained on massive sets of data and images containing text, the model has no concept of what it’s actually “looking” at. This is why generative AI models can spit out images of watches and clocks, but it’s often hard to get them to display specific times, because the model has no idea how to tell time. It just knows clocks have lines that mark time, not what those lines actually indicate.
The inconsistencies were surprisingly common throughout the videos. Viewers pointed out a squirrel that appears to transform into a chipmunk at one point, and a changing number of lamps that appear in another shot. The Swift diehards took particular offense to an AI-generated version of a piano and guitar that was used on Swift’s Eras Tour, which shouldn’t be surprising given how big a deal was made of those custom-made instruments at the time.
It doesn’t appear that generative AI was used in the creation of Swift’s music videos for the new album, and there doesn’t appear to be an indication that generative AI was used in the feature film released to mark the launch of the record. Gizmodo reached out to representatives for Taylor Swift, as well as Rodrigo Prieto, cinematographer of “Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” for comment regarding the potential use of generative AI in the making of these promotional videos, music videos, and the film. No parties responded on the record at the time of publication.
On its face, this appears to be a pretty major blunder. You can’t tell your superfans, who think every word you speak and image you post contains secret messages, to look for clues in an AI-generated video and not expect them to spot inconsistencies. But hey, maybe these weird anomalies are just part of another Easter egg reveal, right?
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