Digitally altered video of Kelly Clarkson misleads about weight-loss drug

Since US singer Kelly Clarkson revealed in 2023 that she lost weight with the help of an unnamed medication, scammers have been promoting countless drugs online purporting that it is the star’s miracle remedy. Among them is a video allegedly showing Clarkson discussing her transformation with US talk show host Jimmy Fallon. However, this is false: the video was digitally altered, and the pair did not discuss any weight-related issues during the 2023 interview.

In the altered 40-second Facebook video post, the television personality appears to say: “I am not a scammer. My name is being used everywhere right now to promote dangerous weight-loss methods.”

“For everyone who is watching this video and wants to lose weight in a short period of time, go to the website below this video and read my official article,” Clarkson appears to add.

Superimposed on the video are banners that read: “Attention, scammers! Official article and Kelly Clarkson website below the video!”

But the featured link opens up a blank page and the URL “sculptlines.com” included in the post leads to a “404” error message.

Claims that the video shows Clarkson promoting a weight-loss drug are false – the video was digitally altered with unrelated audio.

Tonight Show

An internet search for the keywords“Kelly Clarkson and Jimmy Fallon” led to an interview published on YouTube on October 14, 2023 (archived here).

The clothes worn by the pair in the digitally altered video match the Tonight Show clip.

In the interview, Clarkson talked about accidentally turning down an invitation to write music with Mariah Carey. She also promoted her album “Chemistry”.

They did not discuss any diet-related issues. A second online search adding the keyword “weight loss” yielded no relevant results.

Numerous free tools exist online to generate similar videos.

AFP Fact Check extracted the audio from the altered video and ran it through Loccus.ai — an audio tool that looks for specific forensic traces left by voice generators.

The result showed a 92-percent probability the audio was generated with an AI tool.

A comparison of the altered and original clips showed that Clarkson’s eyes and mouth looked distorted in the doctored video.

The doctored video also appears to be a compilation of multiple clips of her taken from the interview.

Weight loss controversy

During an interview in May 2024, actress Whoopi Goldberg appeared on Clarkson’s talk show, where the two women said they had both used prescription medications to lose weight (archived here).

The revelation led to wide backlash from those who opposed the use of medication or felt that Clarkson should have been more transparent.

Since her transformation last year, several false claims have been made about weight-loss products purportedly endorsed by Clarkson, including here and here, many of them are related to “weight-loss gummies” (archived here and here).