Billionaire Elon Musk shared a fake video of Vice President Kamala Harris that was manipulated to make it appear as if she was talking about President Joe Biden's “senility” and that she “knows nothing about running a country.”
“I, Kamala Harris, am the Democratic presidential nominee because Joe Biden finally exposed his shit,” the edited voice says in the video Musk posted to his X account, formerly known as Twitter. The voice, which sounds like but isn’t, goes on to say that Harris was chosen “because I am the perfect candidate for diversity” as a “woman and a person of color.”
Musk did not reveal in his post that the video or audio had been manipulated, but simply wrote, “This is amazing 😂” in the comment. According to New York timesThe video was originally posted by X user @MrReaganUSA, who noted in the post that the video was a “parody.” The edited version of the video parodies Harris' “We Choose Freedom” ad.
X’s policies explicitly prohibit “synthetic, manipulated, or decontextualized media that could mislead or confuse people or cause harm.” As of Sunday morning, X had not added a community note to the post. The platform uses community feedback to correct misleading or deceptive posts. At the time of publication, the video had nearly 118 million views.
In a statement obtained by times“The American people want the real freedom, opportunity, and security that Vice President Harris delivers, not the fake, deceitful lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump,” the Harris campaign said.
In response to the video, Alex Howard, a digital governance expert and director of the Digital Democracy Project at the Education Fund for Progress, posted a response to Musk, “This is a violation of @X’s policies on synthetic media and misleading identities. Are you going to retroactively change them to allow for election year violations?”
Harris, who emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination after President Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the race, has received endorsements from Biden, Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, among other Democratic power players.
Deepfakes and AI-engineered media have emerged as a disinformation threat in recent years. A Democratic consultant is facing criminal voter suppression charges and a $6 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission over fake voice calls that used a modified version of Biden’s voice to discourage voters from participating in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Last year, Ron DeSantis’s campaign shared AI-generated images of Donald Trump hugging infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci. Deepfakes have also been used in attempts to influence elections abroad.
A report from the Brookings Institution in January noted that “AI-generated content has the potential to enhance campaigns designed to undermine democratic discourse by making the content higher quality, more thematically distinct, and easier to mass-produce than previous media campaigns launched domestically and as part of foreign influence operations.”
Several state legislatures have taken up the issue and banned deepfakes in electoral politics. In April, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing on the threat deepfakes pose to elections. Just last week, the Senate passed a bill sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — the DEFIANCE Act — that would ban sexually explicit images generated by artificial intelligence. It now heads to the House. Ocasio-Cortez has been a victim of such deepfakes and first announced the bill in an interview with rolling stone.
“Seeing pictures of yourself that someone might think are real is shocking,” said Alexandria Osaka Cortez. rolling stone“Once you see it, you’ve seen it. It’s exactly the same intent as physical rape and sexual assault.”
“It’s time to give victims their day in court and the tools they need to fight back,” Senator Dick Durbin said when the Senate passed the legislation.
