Taylor Swift’s Fans Are Angry About Her Use of AI. It’s a Warning to All Leaders

Earlier this year, the Harvard Business Review devoted a long article to the “strategic genius” of Taylor Swift. The piece is just one of many articles (including some here on Inc.com) that celebrate Swift’s business and marketing savvy. The mind behind the billion-dollar Eras Tour has often been held up as an exemplar for other business leaders. 

But nobody’s perfect. 

Fans and critics have long bickered about the relative merits of her albums. But Swift is facing a new kind of criticism. This time it’s over the apparent use of AI for a video, recently promoted by Swift and Google. It was part of a scavenger hunt to unlock the lyric video for her latest single, “The Fate of Ophelia.” 

“A bartender’s hand passing through a napkin. A disappearing coat hanger. A carousel horse with two heads. These were just some of the alleged clues that fans spotted,” reports Wired. 

The backlash was swift (sorry, couldn’t help myself). Complaints about the video flooded social media, many with the hashtag #SwiftiesAgainstAI. The video has since been removed without comment. 

This incident is, of course, of interest to dedicated Swift fans who follow every up and down of her career. But you don’t have to be a rabid Swiftie to care about the this brouhaha over AI use. The strength and speed of fans’ reactions is a warning to all business leaders about a growing popular backlash against AI. 

Taylor Swift isn’t the only one facing AI outrage.

Taylor Swift isn’t the first brand to experience anti-AI fury. When Duolingo announced it was becoming an AI-first company back in May, the language learning app faced such a strong backlash that it temporarily hid its previously active and admired TikTok and Instagram videos. 

More recently, AI startup Friend.com spent $1 million to plaster New York City subways with ads for its product, an AI friend. Locals reacted harshly.  

“Across the city, the ads have been defaced with graffiti ranging from hostile (‘A.I. is burning the world around you’) to pleading (‘make a real friend’). The company was accused of profiting off the loneliness epidemic and of playing a part in capitalist surveillance. Some posters were ripped down altogether,” reports the New York Times. Someone even made a website where those far from the physical ads could vandalize them virtually. 

The growing backlash against AI 

These aren’t just a few sporadic protests against particularly clumsy or inept uses of AI. Instead, data suggest they’re representative of a growing backlash against companies’ blitzkrieg approach to AI adoption.

Three years ago, when OpenAI’s ChatGPT was making its splashy debut, a Pew Research center survey found that 32 percent of Americans were more concerned than excited about AI. This year that number is up to 52 percent. And the more people had heard about AI, the more concerned people were. Another 2025 Heartland study found 72 percent of adults had concerns about AI. 

While Pew notes that people are particularly worried about AI and privacy, many aren’t thrilled about being bombarded by AI slop either. 

“The idea of authenticity has long been at the center of the social media promise, for audiences and content creators alike. But a lot of AI-generated content is not following that logic,” Natalia Stanusch, a researcher at non-profit AI Forensics, told Newsweek. “With this flood of content made using generative AI, there is a threat of social media becoming less social and users are noticing this trend.” 

Besides the annoyance of sifting through low-quality AI content, consumers are also concerned about the unauthorized use of artists’ and writers’ work to train AI models, their environmental impact, the amplification of systemic biases, and the potential effect of AI on employment. 

“Workers are more intuitive than a lot of the pundit class gives them credit for. They know this has been a naked attempt to get rid of people,” Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, told Wired. The perception percolating among many is that AI is just another way for the already rich to get even more ridiculously rich, while reducing opportunities for everyday people. 

Taylor Swift’s AI flop is a warning to leaders 

However you feel about the legitimacy of these worries, the anger faced by Taylor Swift suggests leaders can’t ignore growing animosity towards AI. In addition to weighing the costs, payoff, and potential hidden downsides of any AI initiative, companies also need to consider how customers will perceive it. 

Taylor Swift is one of the most wildly beloved figures around. A couple of wonky AI images later and her fans are loudly calling her “lazy,” “disappointing,” and “hypocritical” online. The uproar should push leaders to think carefully about how to position their use of AI. 

That means approaching any public move with caution and transparency. Companies may want to consider testing the waters with a phased roll-out, communicating in a way that acknowledges customers’ concerns, and stressing AI’s ability to augment rather than replace human workers.