Kamala Harris’s election campaign has accused Elon Musk of spreading “manipulated lies” after the Tesla chief executive posted a doctored video featuring the vice-president on his X account.
Musk reposted a manipulated Harris campaign video on Friday evening in which a fake Harris voiceover says: “I was selected because I am the ultimate diversity hire,” and that anyone who criticises her is “both sexist and racist”.
The video has been viewed 128m times on Musk’s account after the world’s richest man posted it with the words “this is amazing” followed by a laughing emoji. Musk owns X, which he rebranded from Twitter last year.
Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator, accused Musk of violating the platform’s guidelines. According to X’s synthetic and manipulated media policy, users are barred from sharing “synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm” although allowances are made for satire provided it does not “cause significant confusion about the authenticity of the media”.
A spokesperson for Harris’s presidential campaign said: “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.”
The “diversity hire” attack line used by some Republicans has been criticised on both sides of the political fence, with the Republican former house speaker Kevin McCarthy calling the attacks “stupid” and the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock describing them as “beneath the rhetoric the American people deserve at this time”.
The fake Harris video was posted originally by the @MrReaganUSA account, which is linked to the conservative YouTuber podcaster Chris Kohls, on X and is labelled a parody.
Kamala Harris Campaign Ad PARODY pic.twitter.com/5lBxvyTZ3o
— Mr Reagan 🇺🇸 (@MrReaganUSA) July 26, 2024
However, Musk, who has endorsed Donald Trump’s candidacy, did not flag the video as a parody when he posted it.
The Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, posted on X on Sunday evening that the manipulated Harris video should be “illegal” and that he would soon sign a bill banning such media, in apparent reference to a proposal supported by California lawmakers to ban “materially deceptive” election deepfakes.
Musk responded on X that “parody is legal in America”, including the original @MrReaganUSA video below it.
Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has been critical of X’s content policies under its new owner, said Musk was signalling to his more than 190 million followers on X that “this kind of AI-generated bile is welcome”. He added: “Musk is not a fit or proper person to be in control of X Corp.”
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One deepfake expert said the Harris video showed the power of generative AI and deepfakes.
“The AI-generated voice is very good,” said Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “Even though most people won’t believe it is VP Harris’s voice, the video is that much more powerful when the words are in her voice, and I’m not sure that an AI-generated label would have had much impact on blunting this effect. This example shows the broad power of generative AI and deepfakes.”
Farid added that given Harris’s status as the presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidential election, he expected the US “will be seeing more and more of this type of nonsense”.
X has been contacted for comment.
