Taylor Swift criticized for AI Showgirl videos

Promo shorts for the hugely successful singer’s blockbuster new album The Life of a Showgirl appeared to use poorly-rendered AI-assisted video.

Taylor Swift, one of the most commercially successful artists in human history, has been accused of using generative AI imagery in promotional videos for her new album The Life of a Showgirl. As Futurism points out, Swift fans, who regularly put everything she does under a microscope, made the discovery and shared their findings on Reddit.

The offending videos were part of a promotional campaign for Showgirl. 12 orange doors with QR codes were placed in 12 cities around the world; when scanned, each code unlocked a different short video. One video that takes place in a bar appears to contain the strange, garbled imagery anyone familiar with AI slop will recognize: you can see color distortions on the bartender’s finger as he places down a napkin (among other red flags). Watch it below.

Swift has previously expressed serious reservations about the spread of AI. In her September 2024 endorsement of Kamala Harris, Swift shared her disturbance over deepfake videos made of her endorsing Donald Trump that were shared by the Republican candidate. “It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation.”

Meanwhile, The Life of a Showgirl is poised to sell over 2.7 million copies on its first day of release, breaking the previous record set by Swift with her 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department. Her Eras tour, which ran from 2023 to 2024 for 149 shows, grossed over $2 billion, making it the most successful tour of all time.