For the release of her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift sent fans to this weekend’s online scavenger hunt. However, when fans unveiled secret videos as part of the campaign, some were worried that the clips would appear to have been produced.
Google search for singer’s name gives you the inexplicable message: “12 cities, 12 doors, video 1 unlock one video.”
Fans had to know where the doors were, physically find them and scan the QR code. This surfaced 12 unique videos with the clues needed to solve the puzzle. When fans Googled the correct phrase, another orange door appeared. Fans had to click and collectively “knock” 12 million times. Finally, he revealed the lyrics video for “The Fate of Ophelia,” which has its own orange door progress bar on YouTube, and the door “opens.”
YouTube has won a video exclusive to the tracks and a lyric video for the rest of the songs from the new album.
Google first announced the Scavenger Hunt in an Instagram video. The video starts with an aerial view of the Earth, with an orange door visible and an orange door overlaid in Google’s search bar.
While Swifties loves puzzles, some were rubbed in the wrong way by a video containing 12 clues that appeared to be generated by AI.
Instead of looking for clues to announce Swift’s new lyrics video, as Swift intended, some fans began scrutinizing video clips like detectives. However, there are computer-generated clips, but it is unclear whether they were made using AI, and how much they were made, if any.
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If these videos were generated using Google’s AI products, that makes sense. Just as Openai introduces the new SORA 2 video generator, this Taylor Swift collaboration will be a coincidence opportunity for Google to show millions of Swifties what the VEO 3 model can do.
Google did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment on how these videos were generated or whether Swift and Google used Google’s proprietary AI technology to help activate this. However, the Swift team and Google have teamed up in the past for similar promotional activities.
The use of AI at Creative Works is a delicate theme. Some artists believe these tools can help them, while others protest the way in which large-scale language models are trained on work without consent, and how artists use their own work to create technology that can threaten their livelihoods.
Even Swift himself spoke about the dangers of AI after President Donald Trump shared an image generated by AI showing support for his campaign last year. The incident drove her to declare the approval of former Vice President Kamala Harris, who opposed Trump in 2024.
“I recently noticed that ‘I’ AI’s mistakenly endorsing Donald Trump’s run has been posted on his site. It really reminded me of the dangers of spreading AI and misinformation.
The controversy over Swift’s potential use of AI has been amplified given her own height in the music industry.
While AI may appeal to some artists as a way to cut costs, billionaire musicians have the resources they could use at their disposal to make fantastical scenes from promotional videos.
