Elon Musk Slammed For Sharing “Diversity Hire” Deepfake Of Kamala Harris On X
Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X, is facing widespread criticism after sharing a deceptively edited video of Vice President Kamala Harris.
The video, which makes it appear that Harris is disparaging President Joe Biden and boasting about being the “ultimate diversity hire,” was reposted by Musk without any disclaimer that it was a parody.
This action seemingly violates X’s own policy on manipulated media.
A Violation of Platform Policies?
The controversial video originally posted by @MrReaganUSA was labeled as a “parody” by the creator.
However, Musk’s repost, accompanied by the caption “This is amazing” and a laughing emoji, made no such clarification.
As of Sunday afternoon, Musk’s post had got over 120 million views, raising questions about the enforcement of X’s policies against sharing “synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.”
“This is a violation of @X’s policies on synthetic media and misleading identities. Are you going to retroactively change them to allow violations in an election year?” said Alex Howard, director of the Digital Democracy Project at the Demand Progress Education Fund.
The Rise of Deepfake Technology and Its Impact
Deepfake technology, which uses AI to create highly realistic but fake videos, has become an increasingly used tool for misinformation.
The edited video Musk shared is a remade Harris campaign ad, with altered images and audio to convey a false narrative.
Pro-democracy groups and tech experts have warned about the dangers of such technology, emphasizing its potential to undermine democratic processes and sway elections.
Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, posted on X that the manipulated Harris video “should be illegal” and that he would soon sign a bill banning such media.
Musk has previously promoted the “community notes” feature on X as a way to provide context and counter misinformation.
However, as of Sunday, no such note was added to Musk’s repost of the Harris video.
Community notes users did suggest possible annotations, such as, “This is an AI-generated video of Vice President Kamala Harris using audio of clips that were never actually stated by the VP.”
Feature Image Credits: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images and Joe Raedle/ Getty Images
