AI-generated song used to falsely claim Ethiopian pop star attacked country's prime minister
- Published on April 25, 2025 at 14:29
- 4 min read
- By Tolera FIKRU GEMTA, AFP Ethiopia
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“Here is the full song,” reads an Amharic caption posted together with the video on April 19, 2025.
The video, which has been shared more than 750 times, starts with a song in Amharic. The lyrics are displayed on the screen.
Translated into English, they read: “Abiy, the prophet, conquered Arat Kilo. I am fed up, my people are starving. Her house is located in Arat Kilo. Her father is Fano, he is marching to settle in Shagar.”
Arat Kilo is the location of the Ethiopian National Palace and where the office of the prime minister is located.
Fano is a rebel force in Ethiopia’s Amhara region and Shagar is another name for Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
While the song plays, various images, including photos of Teddy and the Ethiopian flag, pop up on the screen.
The song continues: “Oh! Oh! Abiy zero! Abiy zero! Life without love, Abiy zero! Zero! Yekatit’s monument was erected by your side. The banda is still there. Why is that, Arat Kilo?”
The Yekatit 12 monument is a memorial in Addis Ababa near the palace. It commemorates a 1937 massacre by Italian troops (archived here).
“Banda” means traitor. In this context, the song slams Abiy as a traitor who failed Ethiopia.
Although some users commented under the video that the lyrics did not match the quality of Teddy’s music, others believed the song was released by the singer.
“Teddy, my king. You rocked it. Long live,” reads one comment.
Pop star
Teddy, whose real name is Tewodros Kassahun, is one of Ethiopia’s biggest pop stars.
His lyrics and music videos are seen by many as being critical of the Ethiopian authorities. Some of his songs were banned during the previous regime under the rule of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).
His music has repeatedly caused controversy. His album “Tikur Sew”, which was about the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II, angered some in the country’s largest ethnic group, the Oromos. “Tikur Sew” was seen as an affront because it glorified an emperor who brutally incorporated Oromo territory into Ethiopia’s borders (archived here).
However, the song in which Teddy allegedly criticises Abiy was created by AI and is not one of his singles.
Synthetic content
AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video.
The video was originally published on a YouTube channel called “Fikat entertainment” on April 19, 2025 (archived here).
The music clip is captioned “Teddy Afro: Zero”.
YouTube’s warning notice describes the footage as “synthetic content” created by the channel owner using artificial content creation tools.
Since March 2024, YouTube has asked content creators to explicitly disclose and label content made with AI tools (archived here).
A review of the channel shows that it has published multiple AI-generated songs using the voices of popular Ethiopian singers.
AFP Fact Check also ran the song through an audio deepfake detector called Deepfake Total.
The results showed a more than 90 percent probability that the song was artificially created.
AFP Fact Check contacted Teddy’s manager Getachew Manguday, who has yet to respond to our request for a comment.
We also searched Teddy’s social media accounts here, here and here and found no trace of the AI-generated song.
AFP Fact Check has previously debunked AI-generated videos on a range of topics in Ethiopia, such as here and here.
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