Amid a surge of political misinformation across the internet, X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk has taken to his own platform to share a manipulated video of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign video. The Tesla founder and billionaire reposted the video Friday afternoon featuring an AI voice of Vice President Harris calling herself the “ultimate diversity hire.”
The video, a “parody” created by right-wing YouTuber Mr. Reagan, is a re-edited version of Harris’ “We Choose Freedom” campaign video. In this new version, the sitting VP is heard calling President Joe Biden “senile” and a “deep state puppet.” On top of the DEI hire line, the video also posits that Harris believes she’s above criticism because she’s a woman and a person of color.
Mr. Reagan notes in his post that the video is a “parody,” however when Musk reposted it, the CEO did not give such a disclaimer. At the time of this writing, the video has been seen over 166 million times, with Musk stating in his post, “This is amazing š.”
Despite owning the platform, it seems Musk is willfully disregarding that the video violates X’s terms of service, which prohibit “synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.”
Comment and quotes tweets of Musk’s repost were quick to point out this fact.
Ever since President Biden declared he would step down ahead of the 2024 presidential election, deepfakes of Kamala Harris have exploded in virality on Tiktok and X. As the November election inches to us day by day, political deepfakes have become a bigger issue than ever before. Despite the concern, legal experts say policymakers still aren’t ready to grapple with exploitative AI. And while Tiktok says they’re combatting these videos, X has made no such moves.
Despite new reports showing a 53 percent decline in revenue since last year, it seems Musk is content with how X is being moderated. The X CEO is committed to keeping it a “free speech platform” despite political misinformation and conspiracy theories being part of the reason revenue is down in the first place.
