CLAIM
Taylor Swift has called the Los Angeles wildfires an act of revenge against the US for its support of Israel in the Gaza bombings.
FACT CHECK
The video is a deepfake and uses AI to falsely attribute comments to Taylor Swift. She did not make these statements.
A video on social media shows American pop star Taylor Swift calling the ongoing wildfires in Greater Los Angeles, California, a “divine retaliation” against the US for supporting the Israeli bombing in Gaza.
BOOM analyzed the viral video and discovered that it is a deepfake and was generated using artificial intelligence. The original video is from Swift's appearance on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on November 12, 2021, which predates the LA fires and the ongoing assault on Gaza by Israeli airstrikes, which began after the attack by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023. against Israel.
Los Angeles has been ravaged by wildfires of unprecedented proportions, fanned by high winds, killing at least 24 people and causing financial losses of $250 billion to $275 billion.
The video has been widely shared on multiple social media platforms, along with another video showing scenes from the Los Angeles wildfires, with the following captions:
Click here to view an archive of the above post. You can view more such posts on Facebook here, here, here and here.
The same video was also posted on X along with the same caption, which you can watch here.
Viral video shows a deepfake of Taylor Swift
BOOM searched Google keywords for Swift's comments about the ongoing fires in LA, but couldn't find any comments that matched her statement in the viral video.
We then took a closer look at the video and discovered several discrepancies in the audio, especially in the tone and manner of speaking, which indicated that a voice cloning tool may have been used to fabricate the video.
Based on this, we conducted a reverse image search using keyframes from Swift's video, which led us to a similar video on YouTube of Swift's appearance on the talk show Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on November 12, 2021.
We compared some keyframes from the viral video to the YouTube video of the talk show and found that they were identical in terms of Swift's clothing, makeup, her jewelry, and the background setting.
This indicated that the viral video was manipulated using the video of Swift's appearance on Fallon's talk show on November 12, 2021 – which far predates the Israeli bombing of Gaza and the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires.
Additionally, we consulted with our partners at the Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU), who informed us of strong evidence of audio manipulation using AI.
According to DAU, deepfake audio detection tool Hiya indicated a 99 percent probability that the audio track was generated by AI, while Hive's AI audio detection tool suggested a high probability that AI voice cloning would be used in the first 20 seconds of the video.
We also ran the video through the University at Buffalo Media Forensics Lab's deepfake detection tool, which found two of the AI video detection models LIPINC (2024) and WAV2LIP-STA (2022) with an 85 percent probability and an 87 probability, 4 percent emphasize that AI is used. to manipulate the video.
Claim: Video shows Taylor Swift saying the Los Angeles wildfires are divine retaliation against the United States for helping Israel with its airstrikes on Gaza.
Claimed by: Social media users
Fact check: False
(This story was originally published by Boom and republished by Our as part of the Shakti Collective)