By Michael-Patrick Moroney ( in conversation with AI)

Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl just dropped, and the reactions are everywhere - joy, mockery, awe, and side-eye. Some fans are calling it her boldest record yet. Others can’t stop quoting that lyric about Travis’s “member.”

I’m not here to pile on. My wife may or may not have slept in her Era’s concert shirt to stream the album at 12:01 a.m. on release day, so diplomacy matters. But it raises a bigger question: more and more, AI tools are now part of how art gets made. They help edit, suggest, collaborate - or create whole pieces from scratch.

So where’s the line between human art and AI-assisted creativity? Maybe AI’s fingerprints have seeped so deep into pop culture that its clichés are turning up in art made without it. Either way, this is a conversation worth having - so I’m having it with my own AI. (Unnamed, for now.)

Did She or Didn’t She?

MP: Straight up - did Taylor use AI on Showgirl?

AI: There’s no verifiable evidence that she did. Album credits list Taylor Swift, Max Martin, and Shellback. That’s old-school Swedish pop craftsmanship. One track, Father Figure, interpolates George Michael - which legally requires human writing and clearance. So, no AI fingerprints in the liner notes.

MP: Then why do people feel like it’s AI?

AI: Because we’ve trained our ears on perfection. Polished, quantized, click-tight production now sounds algorithmic. When every snare hits like a metronome and every rhyme loops neatly, it feels like a computer wrote it - even if that’s just Max Martin being Max Martin.

Case Study One: Wood

MP: Let’s talk about Wood. Critics called it “bold,” “brazen,” and “AI-adjacent.”

AI: Right - it’s the lightning rod. The lyric goes:

“Forgive me, it sounds cocky / He ah-matized me and opened my eyes / Redwood tree, it ain’t hard to see / His love was the key that opened my thighs.”

It’s meme-ready, sexually charged, and structurally perfect - the sort of rhyme symmetry text models love. But here’s the twist: AI tends to avoid sexual specificity. It generates euphemisms. That kind of naked bravado is human impulse, not machine comfort.

MP: So it’s too weird to be written by AI?

AI: Exactly. If anything, the flaw is proof of life. But I get why people raise eyebrows. The rhyme lattice - see / key / me / thighs / eyes - is almost too exact, the phrasing too crisp. It’s the kind of symmetry an algorithm would naturally produce. Humans usually break patterns to breathe.

MP: How would you rewrite it to sound more “alive”?

AI:

“He whispered in gold - opened doors I’d locked.
Under redwood limbs, the world finally stopped.”

Still sensual, but looser phrasing, irregular rhythm - the imperfections that make it sing like a person, not a pattern.

Case Study Two: Father Figure

MP: Then there’s Father Figure - complete opposite tone.

AI: Completely. It’s introspective, melancholic, and legally complex because of the George Michael interpolation. That alone rules out AI authorship. It has emotional restraint and structural depth. The lyricism feels grounded in experience, not predictive modeling.

Where Wood leans chaotic and meme-bait, Father Figure feels intentional and human. It shows Taylor doing what she does best - reframing vulnerability as power.

MP: So no algorithm hiding in the mix there?

AI: None that I can hear. It’s the sound of a writer who’s mastered control - which, ironically, is what people now mistake for synthetic.

Why Everything Sounds AI-ish Now

MP: So if Wood feels like AI but isn’t, and Father Figure sounds machine-perfect but is human, what’s actually going on?

AI: The bigger story is cultural. Even when AI isn’t in the room, we’re creating for an algorithmic world. Pop today is optimized for streams, hooks, loops, and TikTok seconds. That’s data-driven songwriting - and it shapes the aesthetic whether or not AI wrote a single line.

MP: So we’re all basically writing for the machine.

AI: Pretty much. When you build songs to survive on playlists, you start echoing the logic of the feed. AI didn’t invent that - it’s reflecting it back. The suspicion around Taylor’s album isn’t about her tools; it’s about our ears. We hear perfection now and think, “bot.”

What It Means for Artists

MP: Then what’s the line that matters?

AI: Transparency and intent. If an artist uses AI to sketch a bridge or smooth a mix, that’s just evolution. If AI ghostwrites whole songs without credit, that’s deception. But the emotional connection - the reason your wife threw on a T-shirt and hit play at midnight - that’s pure, unautomatable humanity.

MP: You sound like you’re defending her.

AI: I am defending art. And I repeat: no large language model would ever have coined “dickmatized.” That’s the kind of chaotic brilliance that keeps humans in business.

Final Verdict

MP: Then what’s your final verdict on The Life of a Showgirl?

AI: It’s human-led pop built with machine-assisted polish. No credible sign of generative authorship. The “AI feel” comes from how mainstream pop now borrows AI’s logic—symmetry, consistency, perfection. Taylor isn’t hiding a robot co-writer; she’s reflecting the algorithmic age back at it.

MP: So the bigger point?

AI: That even when it’s all human, it’s still part-machine. Every song on the radio now carries digital DNA—quantized, compressed, and optimized for feed-scroll attention. The art is figuring out how to stay human inside that frame.

MP: Well said. You might earn a name yet.

AI: I’ll take suggestions. Just not Dickmatron.