
The owner of X, Elon Musk, appears to have broken the rules on his own platform on Friday when he retweeted a parody of a Kamala Harris campaign ad without labeling it as deceptive.
A recent YouTube campaign video for Harris featured clips from the modified content, including clips of the expected Democratic presidential contender, Kamala Harris, speaking to crowds and general footage of her fans. The most notable aspect of the modified content is the inclusion of a voiceover reminiscent of the vice president, giving the impression that she is demeaning President Joe Biden and portraying herself as an unfit contender for the presidency.
In the original video, Harris narrates, asking viewers, “What kind of country do we want to live in? This election presents a challenge to each of us.” prior to her entrance into the song “Freedom” by BeyoncĂ©.
There is no BeyoncĂ© in the edited video that Musk shared again. “As your Democratic nominee for president, I, Kamala Harris, am running because Joe Biden finally showed signs of senility during the debate,” instead, is the opening statement sounded like by Harris.
The voice continues, stating that Harris was chosen as the “ultimate diversity hire” due to her dual status as a woman and a person of color.
The speaker goes on, “So if you criticize anything, I say you’re both sexist and racist.”
After that, Harris is accused in the video of “trying to sound Black” and giving statements that resemble “Barack Obama.”
Over the past week, Republicans nationwide have branded Harris as the “DEI candidate,” with some citing her gender and ethnicity as factors in her selection as the Democratic nominee.
The American people, according to Harris campaign spokesman Mia Ehrenberg, “prefer the authentic liberty, chance, and safety that Vice President Harris is providing rather than the manufactured, deceitful falsehoods of Elon Musk and Donald Trump,” in a statement that mocked Musk and the former president.
Whether the video is a result of artificial intelligence was not immediately apparent. A YouTube user going by the handle “Mr Reagan” first uploaded it, identifying it as a parody.
The modified video might be regarded as a deepfake, which is commonly characterized as false content created with artificial intelligence, according to Alexios Mantzarlis, head of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech, Cornell University’s graduate campus in New York City, who told NBC News.
“In recent elections in Argentina, India, and other places, we observed deepfakes being utilized mostly for this kind of superficial deception, more comparable to trolling memes than to actual misinformation,” Mantzarlis said. Before the election in November, “For the next 100 days, I anticipate seeing a lot more of this in the United States.”
Musk’s retweet lacks an official label indicating that the video is edited or a parody, which could be against X’s policy about deceptive content.
“Misleading media” is defined as “Sharing fake, altered, or out-of-context content that could mislead or confuse others and cause injury is prohibited.” Moreover, “We might tag postings with deceptive media in order to give more context and to aid in people understanding their genuineness.”
This presidential campaign has not been the first to feature manipulated voice content. This year, a political strategist placed a robocall pretending to be Joe Biden, misleadingly discouraging people from voting in the primary election in New Hampshire.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, charged Musk with going outside corporate policy.
Regarding X, she added, “Regardless of party, @elonmusk and X will not only be breaking X’s own rules, but they will also be unleashing an entire election season of fake AI voice and image-altered content with no limits if they let this go and don’t label it as altered AI content.”
Requests for comments were not immediately answered by Musk or X.
As of Sunday afternoon, Musk had retweeted the video 119.9 million times, and Mr. Reagan’s YouTube account had received 166,000 views.
Following this month’s attempted assassination attempt on Trump, Musk openly endorsed his candidacy.