Taylor Swift Never Said She Was Anti-AI

October 6, 2025
8:53 pm

After months of “will she/won’t she/does it even matter” last fall, Taylor Swift posted an endorsement of Kamala Harris on her Instagram ahead of the 2024 presidential election. While most of her statement was focused on the Harris–Tim Walz campaign’s emphasis on reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ issues, she couched the timing in then-candidate Donald Trump’s use of an AI-generated image of Swift endorsing him. “Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” she wrote at the time. In retrospect, the wording of her statement makes it sound like it’s perhaps the first time she ever considered that her image could be weaponized.

What Swift iterated is what several celebrities have fought against in the rise of artificial intelligence: the use of their likelihood to say things they themselves would never say. Swift never called herself anti-AI, but instead was sure to clarify that she wanted control over her personhood when it came to technology.

It’s a jarring statement to look back on in the context of her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, if in part because some fans have been speculating around Swift’s use of AI in her promotional materials. A dozen activations from YouTube and Google appeared in cities all around the world, where fans could scan a QR code and make their way to a video that tied back to the album in some way — little moving tableaux, not unlike what appear at the start of her music video for “The Fate of Ophelia.” Swift shows off the practical sets in behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage in The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, but fans spent the weekend pointing out strange inconsistencies in these door videos that line up with telltale signs of AI art like muddled writing and weird physics. There’s a hazy, fantastical quality to the videos in general, but not the kind of fantasy where letters are misshapen and blurring into one another.

While the activation is directly tied to The Life of a Showgirl, Swift did not put these videos out herself, nor did Taylor Nation, her social-media spokeshandle. Though you may want to investigate yourself, the videos are now private on YouTube. Google did not respond to a request for comment. When Swift mentioned her own fears about AI, her statement had nothing to do with climate destruction, copyright infringement, tacky aesthetics, or any other conventional complaints about the technology. She mostly didn’t want to spread misinformation. Those promo videos aren’t doing that, unless the information is how one hanger can move through another as though physics don’t matter. The use of AI isn’t illegal, but it is sloppy, especially for an artist who is so forward about process and practice.

The videos sat poorly after a weekend of Swift overload. Her movie was No. 1 at the box office, she went on a U.K.-based press-tour blitz before hopping over to do press Stateside this week, and the nature of The Life of a Showgirl is glamour- and wealth-forward. Swift name-drops Gucci and Balenciaga, even kidding that she would never trade her Cartier for someone who stays in “Elizabeth Taylor.” A joke she made on Graham Norton about how she wished she invested in beads ahead of the Eras Tour friendship-bracelet trend landed like a big stone. Despite the glitz inherent to her album, the backlash is less around what’s lyrically or even artistically present, but her literal business practices. And there are few things businesses love more than cutting costs. The result of the doors and their associated videos wasn’t a major reveal, either: It’s a Swiftism that she repeated on the press tour, “the crowd is your king.” The king, however, isn’t rocking with this showgirl, at least not right now.