By The newspaper
29 Jul 2024, 20:29 PM EDT
Elon Musk shared a fake video on his X account of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, without warning that it was a parody or a joke. After being criticized, the billionaire claims that he consulted with experts and defends that the parody is legal in the United States, in relation to using Artificial Intelligence to modify Harris’ voice in his campaign ad.
When Elon Musk shared the fake video on his profile without warning that it was a joke, it represents a violation of the content moderation rules of the social network X, which he has owned since 2022. The video uses deepfake to alter Kamala Harris’s voice on her “We choose freedom” announcement published last week.
The campaign team of the possible Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States regretted the publication, which has so far generated 130 million views on Elon Musk’s profile.
“The American people want the true freedom, opportunity, and security that Vice President Harris offers, not the false and manipulated lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump,” they wrote.
Musk says he sought advice
The 53-year-old businessman responded to criticism from some officials, including California Governor Gary Newsom, who promised to sign a bill that would ban “manipulating a voice” in fake campaign ads.
“I consulted a world-renowned authority, Professor Suggon Deeznutz, and he told me that parody is legal in the United States,” Musk wrote in response to Newsom’s post. The text is accompanied by a shrug emoji.
The @MrReaganUSA account was the first to publish the edited video of the vice president’s announcement, but in its post it called it a “joke.” Elon Musk saw the post and decided to share it on his profile, writing only “amazing” with an emoji of a laughing face with tears.
Fake video with several modified phrases
The deepfake content claims that President Joe Biden is senile, that the Democratic candidate “knows nothing about how to run the country,” that the vice president appears to call herself a “puppet of the deep state,” and that she was chosen simply because she is the right representation of diversity, being a black woman.
“I was chosen because I am the most diverse hire,” the deepfake version of Harris says in the ad. “I am a woman and a person of color, so if you criticize anything I say, you are sexist and racist,” the video also reads.
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