Can Taylor Swift be dethroned by artificial intelligence?

Thursday began with Britain’s deeply unpopular prime minister quitting her job and ended with one of the most popular musicians in the world [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( Thursday began with Britain’s deeply unpopular prime minister quitting her job and ended with one of the most popular musicians in the world releasing a new album. Coincidence? The general sense is that Liz Truss resigned for [crashing the UK economy](, [amplifying chaos in the government]( and being generally incompetent. But maybe she just wanted to be able to listen to Taylor Swift’s new album, Midnights, without the sound of crashing markets and brawling Tory MPs ringing in her ears. We’re yet to see how much of a success Midnights will be compared to Swift’s previous hits, but shortly after its release, [Spotify crashed for thousands of users]( and the album shot to No. 1 on the US iTunes sales chart — so I’m going to take a stab at “big.” Plus it’s got some highly relatable lines for Truss, including this one from “Anti-Hero”: “Everybody agrees. It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.” As the most streamed female artist of all time on Spotify, Taylor [doesn’t have many true competitors]( — but soon there might be a new threat in town: artificial intelligence. Honestly! For a brief period this year, the AI image generator Dall-E was a more popular search than the pop icon: Granted, that’s not a particularly threatening start, but there’s more! Back in 2021, [Microsoft software engineer Nazifa Nawar trained an AI model to generate Taylor Swift lyrics](, with amusingly decent results such as: Life was a willow and it bent right to your wind So you gotta belong somewhere Hey, that's my arse That's my dress Hey, that's my skirt Hey, that's my hat That's my hat It's not that easy in your world It's that simple But I got that arse. As Parmy Olson notes, there’s plenty of progress being made in moving images and voice AI technology. Researchers from Meta and Alphabet have both [developed systems that can generate videos]( with just about any text prompt. The resulting videos — think dog running on a beach or a teddy bear doing the dishes — are surreally glitchy, but nonetheless remarkable. Meanwhile, [AI can now replicate your face and voice for all eternity](, which is a bit concerning if that’s how you make your money. There are now questions over the legalities and contracts involved with AI-connected voice work. Ninety-three percent of voice actors saw AI as a threat to their employment. The combined power of these technologies makes it more probable that we’ll see an artificially generated Taylor Swift music video before we see self-driving cars take to the road (though [China has been proactively preparing for the latter](, as Anjani Trivedi writes). That feels a little weird; surely the point of art is that it’s personal, an expression of human creativity. Well, yes. But AI art could come with some benefits, too. Parmy writes that [wider use of AI-generation tools might stymie the flow of fake images]( (tools like Dall-E have filters in place to prevent celebrities or illegal activity being used in its images) and remove some of their power as people grow more aware of their existence. Still, artists and designers are rightly concerned about how this technology will change the nature of their work. So, [should Taylor Swift and her peers]( be worried? Probably not, argues Tyler Cowen. For example, she doesn’t have more than 228 million Instagram [followers]( and almost 15 million TikTok followers for her music alone. She’s a star, and that stardom comes from something that can really only supplied by a living, breathing human being. I can’t imagine relating to a song about heartbreak that was written by something that has never experienced heartbreak. Still, who knows? You might catch me in a couple of years weeping over “Heartbreak_v5.mp3” by [GPT-2](. More Tech Reads: - Elon Musk wants to [slash staff numbers at Twitter](. That’s worrying to say the least, says Tim Culpan. - Say hello to uncharted territory for the internet, explains Parmy Olson, as [Kanye West agrees to buy Parler](. More Data From Bloomberg Opinion [UK shoppers will probably need to seek solace]( in Taylor Swift’s songs as Andrea Felsted warns they’re facing a tough few months. Housing is in a slump, but Justin Fox says that [apartment builders didn’t get that memo](. Notes: To contact the author of this newsletter, email Lara Williams at lwilliams218@bloomberg.net. This is the Theme of the Week edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a digest of our top commentary published every Sunday. Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. 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