|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Claim: Viral social media posts accompanied by audio clips claim US singer and actress Selena Gomez has composed a song to mourn victims of Ghana’s recent helicopter crash.
Verdict: False! Selena Gomez has not composed a song about the recent tragedy. The associated song is AI-generated.
Full Text
A military helicopter crashed in the Ashanti Region on Wednesday, August 6, 2025, killing eight people, including two senior ministers, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah, Minister of Defence, and Alhaji Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed, Minister for Environment, Science and Technology.
The government later declared three days of national mourning. Tributes have since been pouring in from various international bodies, including the African Union and ECOWAS, as well as heads of state, including those of Liberia and Kuwait.
As tributes pour in, viral social media posts claim that American singer and actress Selena Gomez has composed a tribute song in honour of the fallen heroes.
One of the Facebook posts was captioned, “Such a soul-touching song from an American actress, Selena Gomez, for Ghana as we still mourn and remember our fallen heroes. #GhanaMourns.” It has already racked in more than 600,000 views and over 1,000 comments.
Radio presenter Ebenezer Donkoh earlier raised an alarm over the viral song, labelling it as AI-generated, although some suggested otherwise.
DUBAWA decided to fact-check this as part of its mandate to combat misinformation.
Verification
To verify the claim, DUBAWA downloaded the 4:45-minute-long video from YouTube for further analysis. Given that the visual elements of the video are not original but pieces of different photos showing Ghanaian mourners in a slideshow, the audio element was subjected to analysis.
The video was therefore converted to .mp3 format.
The file was then run through Submit Hub’s AI song checker program. As shown below, the song was highly likely AI-generated.
Screenshot of audio analysis
The results show that Riffusion, an AI song production application, created the media.
Further searches by DUBAWA revealed that different social media accounts have used the platform to produce music claimed to be made by celebrities. This YouTube account, for example, has indicated that its sound is AI-produced.
Meanwhile, there is evidence of using deep fake celebrity videos to celebrate Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Troaré.
DUBAWA has previously fact-checked similar claims, such as the claim that Rihanna has composed a song to endorse Traoré.
Meanwhile, a review of Selena Gomez’s verified social media profiles, including Facebook, X, and Instagram, does not show her mentioning or promoting the Ghana tribute song she is alleged to have composed.
There is also no report from reputable media houses about this tribute from the American singer to the departed souls in Ghana.
Conclusion
Based on the findings above, we conclude that the song claimed to have been composed by American singer and actress Selena Gomez to mourn with Ghana is AI-generated.
