Musk Visual China Data Map
Recently, Tesla CEO Musk forwarded a video using AI to forge the voice of US Vice President Harris, triggering criticism and concern.
According to a report by the New York Times on July 27, on the evening of the 26th local time, Musk forwarded a video with fake Harris voice as a dubbing on the social platform This is suspected of violating the user terms of use of the x platform and has raised concerns about the use of AI technology to mislead information in elections. In the
video, a fake Harris voice claims to be the "best diversity employee" and says: "If you criticize anything I say, you are sexist and racist." The 1 minute and 53 second clip The content of the video is basically taken from the first campaign advertisement released by Harris on the 25th, but the voice-over of the original video was replaced with a fake Harris voice. In addition, the scene at the beginning of the original video in which Republican candidate Trump and deputy Vance appeared as "villains" in the 2024 election was also edited and deleted.
According to the Associated Press report on the 29th, two experts who study AI-generated media content reviewed the relevant videos and determined that most of the audio was generated using AI technology. Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said that this video demonstrates generative artificial intelligence and deep forgery (using AI software through "face-changing", voice simulation, video generation, etc. The power of tampering and forging existing images, sounds, and videos). He believes that generative AI companies should ensure that their services are not misused to harm people or democracy.
The original publisher of the video that Musk transferred is called "Mr. Reagan" and has 348,000 subscribers on the YouTube video platform. "Mr. Reagan" admitted in the comment area of the x post that he was the "producer" of the video and labeled the relevant post as a "parody." But Musk did not put a similar label when retweeting it, and only posted the comment "This is amazing" and a laughing emoji.
x's terms of use state that users "may not share media content that has been synthesized, manipulated or taken out of context that may deceive or mislead people and cause harm." According to the New York Times, digital governance expert Alex Howard posted on the 27th that Musk violated X’s policy on synthetic content and misleading information, and asked Musk, as the owner of X, whether he intended to Modify these provisions to facilitate election year violations.
At present, Musk has not responded to this matter. As of noon on July 29, Musk’s repost had more than 127 million views and had not yet been deleted.
US President Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential campaign on July 21, supporting his deputy Harris to become the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2024 election. Harris campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement: "We believe the American people want Vice President Harris to deliver true freedom, opportunity and security; not Elon Musk and False lies manipulated by Donald Trump. "Two weeks ago, shortly after Trump's assassination, Musk posted on x to express his support for Trump.
In recent years, some experts have issued increasingly urgent warnings about deepfakes driven by AI technology, requiring relevant agencies to strengthen supervision of AI and respond to the threat it poses to democracy. The U.S. Congress has not yet passed relevant laws regarding the application of AI in the political field, but many mainstream American social platforms, including Facebook, Facebook, and YouTube, have required users to disclose AI-generated content.
