Does an authentic video show Taylor Swift saying that the 2025 Los Angeles fires are divine retribution for American actions in Gaza? No, that's not true: The original footage dates back to a 2021 appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." Analysis tools determined with 100 percent confidence that the voice added to the clip on social media is AI generated.
The video appeared in a post (archived here) on X on January 11, 2025. It was captioned:
'America's fires: A consequence of its actions in Gaza?'
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Jan 17 15:18:43 2025 UTC)
The altered video clip is one minute long and has Arabic subtitles. A reverse image search with Google Lens surfaced a November 13, 2021, article in Arab News about Swift wearing a white Zuhair Murad minidress on "The Tonight Show." The show's YouTube channel posted a 9:38-minute-long video of Swift's original appearance on November 12, 2021. At the 4:33 mark in the video on YouTube, Swift made a hand gesture that was also shown in the clip shared to X, which identifies the portion of the original footage used in the altered clip.
During this portion of her appearance (pictured below right), Swift told the story behind ad-libbing the song "All Too Well" during a rehearsal. In the altered video clip (inset below left), the AI-generated voice is saying:
This brutal assault has caused immense suffering for Gaza's residents and left its infrastructure in ruins while the world remained largely silent. However in just two days divine retribution struck the United States as a natural disaster consumed an area larger than Gaza itself.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with X and YouTube screenshots taken on Fri Jan 17 17:14:18 2025 UTC)
A variety of deepfake analysis tools at TrueMedia.org (read full report, archived here) determined that this video has substantial evidence of manipulation, with a 100 percent confidence rating from the AI generated Audio Detector (pictured below).
(Source: TrueMedia.org screenshot taken on Fri Jan 17 17:21:35 2025 UTC)
Other fact check agencies have reviewed this claim, including USAToday, Factly and Logically Facts.
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Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims associated with Taylor Swift can be found here.
