Did Taylor Swift Say LA Fires Are Payback For Gaza Bombings? A Fact Check

CLAIM

Taylor Swift has called the Los Angeles wildfires a payback to the US for supporting Israel on Gaza bombings. 

FACT CHECK

The video is a deepfake, using AI to falsely attribute comments to Taylor Swift. She did not make these statements.

Social media is rife with a video showing American pop star Taylor Swift calling the ongoing wildfires in Greater Los Angeles in United States' California a "divine retribution" against the US for supporting Israel's bombings in Gaza.

BOOM analysed the viral video and found that it is a deepfake, and has been generated using artificial intelligence. The original video has been taken from Swift's appearance at the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on November 12, 2021, which predates both the LA fires and the ongoing onslaught of Gaza by Israeli airstrikes, which began after the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants against Israel. 

Los Angeles has been engulfed in wildfires of an unprecedented scale, fueled by strong winds, killing at least 24 people, and causing financial losses to the tune of US$250-275 billion.

The video has been shared widely 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. More such posts on Facebook can be viewed here, here, here and here. 

This same video was posted along with the same caption on X as well, which can be viewed here.

Viral Video Shows A Deepfake Of Taylor Swift

BOOM searched with keywords on Google for Swift's comments regarding the ongoing LA fires, but was unable to find any such comment which matched her statement in the viral video.

We then viewed the video closely, and found several discrepancies in the audio, particularly in the tone and manner of speaking, which indicated the possibility of voice cloning tool being used to fabricate the video.

Taking cue from this, we did a reverse image search with keyframes from Swift's video, which led us to a similar video on YouTube of Swift's appearance at the talk show Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, on November 12, 2021.

We compared some keyframes from the viral video with the YouTube video of the talk show, and found them to be identical in terms of Swift's clothing, make up, her jewellery 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 both Israel's bombings of Gaza, and the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles.

Furthermore, 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 per cent probability of the audio track being AI-generated, while Hive's AI audio detection tool suggested a strong likelihood of AI voice cloning being used in the first 20 seconds of the video.

We also ran the video through University at Buffalo Media Forensics Lab's deepfake detection tool, with two of its AI video detection models LIPINC (2024) and WAV2LIP-STA (2022) highlighting an 85 per cent likelihood and 87.4 per cent likelihood of AI being used to manipulate the video.

Claim: Video shows Taylor Swift saying Los Angeles wildfires are divine retribution against the United States for helping Israel in its air strikes on Gaza.

Claimed By: Social media users

Fact Check: False

(This story was originally published by Boom, and republished by NDTV as part of the Shakti Collective)