Taylor Swift’s Fans Are Spreading AI-Edited Videos Of Her Ex Joe Alwyn In A Bid To Vilify Him

Joe has not publicly acknowledged the breakup in any capacity, and while Taylor hasn’t explicitly discussed it, she has dropped hints about what went down between them through her music.

Almost immediately, fans began to theorize that songs on Taylor’s 2022 album Midnights were inspired by the slow demise of her long-term romance, with tracks like “Bejeweled” suggesting that Taylor had been forced to choose between her relationship and the glitz and glamor of fame — and ultimately chose the latter. 

Then, a month after the split was announced, Taylor released a brand new song called “You’re Losing Me,” which is told from the point of view of somebody who is desperate for their partner to fight for their relationship, only to be left feeling like an “imposition.”

This song was widely assumed to be about Joe, and six months after its release, Taylor’s close friend and collaborator Jack Antonoff stirred the pot when he revealed that it had actually been written and recorded long before she and Joe finally split.

Days later, Taylor herself made several apparent references to Joe in her Time magazine interview, where she praised her new boyfriend, Travis Kelce, for not being afraid to show up for her. 

“We’re just proud of each other,” she pointedly added, before alluding to her low-key lifestyle with Joe in a less-than-positive way by saying: “Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years — I’ll never get that time back.”

Fans immediately began to speculate that the album would be about the breakup, and within hours of its title — The Tortured Poets Department — being revealed they discovered an uncanny connection to Joe.

In 2022, Joe had revealed during an interview with Paul Mescal that they were both in a group chat with fellow actor Andrew Scott called the “Tortured Man Club,” which was seemingly inspired by the characters all three actors have played on screen. 

This fueled the belief that the album is a swipe at Joe, and things reached a fever pitch when the tracklist was revealed. Some of the song titles are obvious references to their split, including “So Long, London,” which mentions Joe’s home city. 

And despite nothing being known about The Tortured Poets Department other than the song titles, which at this point could be about anything, many of Taylor’s fans have used it as ammunition to vilify Joe. 

Since the album was announced, Joe has been at the center of a wave of abusive tweets and online comments from Taylor’s fans in an apparent reckoning. 

Some have even spread unfounded claims that Joe cheated on Taylor, crediting made-up source quotes about him being unfaithful to outlets that have no record of publishing such stories. 

The fake video was seemingly inspired by Taylor announcing a new version of her album that includes an exclusive bonus track. On her Instagram post about it, Taylor included a photo with the words: “You don’t get to tell me about sad” written on it, which many guessed are lyrics from the exclusive song. 

“They've been getting more aggressive than I've ever seen them,” another wrote. “Actually fabricating evidence to make him look bad and suppressing attempts to fact check it. I hope they don't take it further than this, but I already didn't think they'd go this far, and here we are. It'd be nice if Taylor could make a statement condemning her fans who do this. I wish I still had enough faith that she'd do something like that for anyone but herself.”

“Honestly I don’t understand how taylor is letting him get bullied and hated on the internet when she’s gone through the exact thing,” somebody else said. One more agreed: “I really am losing respect for Taylor the more time goes by and she allows her rabid fans to try to destroy people’s reputations. Especially someone she spent 6 years with. How incredibly immature of her and gross of her fans.”

Others pointed out the hypocrisy of using AI to vilify Joe so soon after Taylor herself was targeted by AI when somebody created graphic deepfake images of her and posted them to X. 

“So AI is bad when people used it against her. Yes, it is bad and she did not deserve that. However they have no problem using it against Joe. It’s bad and wrong in both cases,” one person wrote. Another echoed: “So AI generated stuff is ok until it happens to Taylor? noted 🙄”

The backlash ramped up a gear when Taylor released an extended version of her heartbreak anthem “All Too Well” alongside the rerelease of her album Red in 2021.

Jake ended up having to turn off his Instagram comments after he was inundated with abusive messages from Taylor’s fans, and later told Esquire that while he doesn’t “begrudge” his ex writing about her personal experiences, she shouldn’t let her fans troll people on her behalf.

“It has nothing to do with me. It’s about her relationship with her fans,” he said at the time. “It is her expression. Artists tap into personal experiences for inspiration, and I don’t begrudge anyone that.”

“At some point, I think it’s important when supporters get unruly that we feel a responsibility to have them be civil and not allow for cyberbullying in one’s name,” Jake went on to add.

In 2016, Calvin Harris publicly accused Taylor of trying to “bury” him “like Katy Perry” when negative reports started to appear about him after they ended their 15-month relationship and her fans descended on him.  

The reference to Katy alluded to Taylor’s well-publicized feud with her fellow pop star, which gained notoriety when Taylor made it clear that her song “Bad Blood” was about their fallout. 

While Katy and Taylor are now on good terms — with Katy even attending the latter’s Eras Tour in Australia last week — things are certainly less rosy between Taylor and her past exes, and it seems unlikely that Joe will be any different.