A news headline caught our attention this morning: ‘Taylor Swift News: AI-Generated ‘The Man For Me’ Music Video Sparks Fan Excitement’.
Given the fan unrest when Swift’s team was suspected of using GenAI video in Shorts for a treasure-hunt campaign last autumn, we were surprised. But no: ‘The Man For Me’ is NOT an official video, and it led us to quite the rabbit-hole on YouTube.
The story on German site Ad Hoc News said that the video was the work of New Songs Haven, and described it as “not an official release from Swift herself” but “though unofficial, it feels like a natural extension of her catalog”.
So, it’s an AI-generated song and an AI-generated music video. We tracked it down here, and… let’s just say that the disclosures need work.
The title is ‘Taylor Swift – THE MAN FOR ME. New music video.’ and the top part of its description – the bit that people see if they don’t click ‘…more’ to see the full text – says this:
“The wait is finally over. The official music video for “THE MAN FOR ME” by Taylor Swift is here. Taylor Swift unveils the cinematic music video for her latest heartfelt single…”
But it’s not by Taylor Swift, nor is she unveiling the video, nor is it her latest single. It’s only lower down the description that AI is mentioned, and then lower still “No copyright infringement intended. This is a fan-centric, AI-assisted artistic project celebrating the music of Taylor Swift”.
New Songs Haven’s channel also includes similarly-unofficial music videos for a range of artists, including a bunch of Rihanna ft. A$AP Rocky duets, a Drake ft. Taylor Swift one and, erm, a Beyoncé ft. Cristiano Ronaldo collab.
(He’s got a good set of AI-assisted pipes, it turns out. Doesn’t sound very Portuguese, mind…)
The stars featured have sharp legal teams; YouTube says it’s determined to crack down on deepfakes; Vevo may have something to say about its logo being in all the thumbnail images… This channel may face a struggle to stay up.
These music videos aren’t popular right now. They have a few hundred views apiece, and just over 300 subscribers for the channel itself, so there’s no evidence they’ve managed to game YouTube’s recommendation algorithms.
Even so, it’s a pause for thought, in a world where soon this kind of material could be just a few clicks away for anyone to generate, whatever their technical abilities.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source musically.com ’
