Elon Musk Shared Misleading AI Video of Vice President Kamala Harris on X

Elon Musk, the owner of X (the platform formerly known as Twitter), shared a misleading AI-generated video of Vice President Kamala Harris.

On Friday, Elon Musk reposted the doctored parody campaign video featuring Harris on X without labeling it as AI-generated and misleading — an apparent violation of his own platform’s rules.

Musk shared the digitally manipulated campaign video for Kamala which appears to use a deepfake voice of the presumed Democratic nominee for U.S. president.

Musk posted the video alongside the caption: “This is amazing” with a laughing emoji. Musk’s post has amassed over 128.9 million views on X.

In the altered AI video which mimics Harris’ voice, the vice president says that President Joe Biden is senile, that she does not “know the first thing about running the country” and that, as a woman and a person of color, she is the “ultimate diversity hire.”

“So if you criticize anything, I say you’re both sexist and racist,” Harris’ AI-generated voice says in the clip.

The video then accuses Harris of “trying to sound Black” and doing a “Barack Obama impression” in her speeches.

The AI video was posted originally by the @MrReaganUSA account on X which is linked to the conservative YouTuber podcaster Chris Kohls and the video was labelled a parody.

However, when Musk reposted the video on his own account eight hours later, he made no such disclosure. This would seem to run afoul of X’s policies, which prohibit sharing “synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.”

X’s current policy was established in April 2023 after Musk took over the platform. It defines misleading media as content that is “significantly and deceptively altered, manipulated or fabricated” and that is “likely to result in widespread confusion on public issues.” The policy states that such content must either be labeled or removed.

“We believe the American people want the real freedom, opportunity, and security Vice President Harris is offering; not the fake, manipulated lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump,” a spokesperson for Harris’s presidential campaign tells AP News in a statement in response to the AI video.

The AI video also caught the attention of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has threatened to introduce legislation to curb deceptive advertisements.

“Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal,” he wrote on X following Musk’s video.

“I’ll be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is.”

 
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.