Taylor Swift’s fans are used to scouring her videos and social media posts for hidden messages about her albums.

Following the debut of “The Life of a Showgirl,” certain Swift fans speculated that a trail of clues led them to suspect the use of artificial intelligence in a series of the album’s promotional videos.

Google orchestrated a 12-video promotional scavenger hunt, encouraging fans to locate 12 orange doors hidden in 12 cities across the globe, aligning with her 12th album. Each door displayed a QR code that unlocked video hints to unravel a code phrase, which fans needed to look up on Google. This journey concluded at the lyric video for the album’s kickoff track, “The Fate of Ophelia.”

As fans deciphered the video hints, some noticed peculiar text, blurred images, and objects behaving in unexpected ways. Under the hashtag #SwiftiesAgainstAI on X, discussions arose about the possibility of the videos using generative AI.

Swift hasn’t directly endorsed the campaign featuring the orange doors, leaving her degree of involvement in producing the clips uncertain. These clips briefly appeared as Shorts on her YouTube channel.

Currently, the Shorts are not accessible on Swift’s YouTube platform. However, her latest video for “The Fate of Ophelia” and the 12 lyric videos from the “Showgirl” album remain available, none of which incorporate AI.

A representative for Swift did not provide comment for the story. Google did not respond to a request for comment.

A victim of AI-created deepfakes, Swift has openly stood for artists’ rights to their creations. This stance potentially fueled fan disappointment regarding the promotional videos, as AI frequently trains on data that includes copyrighted materials.

Some fans pointed out that Swift appeared to use hand-painted props on the set of the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia,” noting that the music icon has long been very thoughtful about the presentation of her work.

“When so much effort has been put into the rest of the album rollout … I think it is very, very lazy and disappointing to use generative AI to create videos a human being very much could have done,” Rachel Lord, a self-described fan of Swift, said in a TikTok video.

“I think it’s very important that we as fans talk about how much we disagree with this, because if we don’t talk about it, they’re just going to continue with it,” she said, emphasizing that she’s not “hating on Taylor.”

The controversy arose amid some mixed reviews for Swift’s latest album, which topped Spotify charts and sold 2.7 million copies in its first day of release. While many have praised the upbeat bops on “The Life of a Showgirl,” others have said the tracks lack the kind of lyricism they have come to expect of Swift.

Swift’s diehard fan base has traditionally come to her defense amid any backlash. The AI speculation and the subsequent criticism, however, appeared to come just as much from her fans as her detractors.

In a Reddit post about the orange door promo clips in the popular r/TaylorSwift community, a moderator wrote: “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.”

Several are calling on Swift — who has not commented on the AI speculation — to make a statement about the matter.

“Dear @taylornation13, We expected a decent album promo but we noticed that the promotion on cities were made by A.I,” wrote one X user who describes themself as a “taywarrior” and Swiftie in their bio. The post had been viewed more than 1.3 million times as of Tuesday afternoon.

“A.I has a large impact on the environment and wildlife because of its LARGE water consumption and more,” the user added. “Please learn better next time. #SwiftiesAgainstAI.”

The use of AI in media production has been a polarizing subject in the entertainment industry. As generative AI tools become increasingly integrated into film, TV and music production, artists have railed against the technology due to concerns over labor displacement as well as AI companies’ scraping of human-made work without consent or compensation.

Outside of vocal pushback from artists and studios, AI image, video and music generators have been hit with numerous copyright infringement lawsuits from authors, artists, news outlets, mass media companies and music labels.

Some of Swift’s defenders have argued that the seemingly AI-generated quirks in the videos might be explained with computer-generated imagery. Others have insisted that CGI would not cause objects to morph, blur or disappear when the camera moves.

Swift has not condemned the use of AI usage as a whole, but she has previously condemned its misuse. In a 2024 Instagram post endorsing Kamala Harris for president, Swift addressed President Donald Trump’s attempt to tout an AI image of her.

“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site,” Swift wrote. “It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation.”