US Vice President Kamala Harris.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Elon Musk, the world's richest man, has waded into one of the thorniest issues facing US politics: deepfake videos.
On Friday night, Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform 'X', reposted an edited campaign video for Vice President Kamala Harris that appears to have been digitally manipulated to change the spot's voice-over in a deceptive manner.
The video mimics Harris' voice, but instead of using her words from the original ad, it has the vice president saying that President Joe Biden is senile, that she does not "know the first thing about running the country" and that, as a woman and a person of color, she is the "ultimate diversity hire."
In addition, the clip was edited to remove images of former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Senator J D Vance of Ohio, and to add images of Biden. The original, unaltered ad, which the Harris campaign released Thursday, is titled "We Choose Freedom."
The version posted on X does not contain a disclaimer, although the account that first uploaded it Friday morning, @MrReaganUSA, noted in its post that the video was a "parody." When Musk reposted the video on his own account eight hours later, he made no such disclosure, stating only, "This is amazing," followed by a laughing emoji.
Musk's post, which has since been viewed 98 million times, would seem to run afoul of X's policies, which prohibit sharing "synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm."
Some observers quickly called out the post. "This is a violation of @X's policies on synthetic media & misleading identities," Alex Howard, a digital governance expert and the director of the Digital Democracy Project at the Demand Progress Education Fund, posted on the site Saturday. "Are you going to retroactively change them to allow violations in an election year?"
Musk did not respond to a request for comment. The owner of the @MrReaganUSA account, who appears to be a conservative podcast host named Chris Kohls, also did not reply to a query. In a statement, the Harris 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."
Pro-democracy groups have raised increasingly urgent alarms about deepfakes, a broad term for digital content that employs artificial intelligence and other technology to create audio, video or images that spread false information and could influence voter behavior.
In January, before the New Hampshire Democratic primary, a robocall using AI technology to mimic Biden's voice instructed voters not to participate in the election. The political consultant who orchestrated the calls was later indicted on state charges of impersonating a candidate and voter suppression. During this year's Republican primary, deepfake videos depicting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorsing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, or announcing his early withdrawal from the race, were rampant.
In March, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, an academic research initiative, said the technology was "already having a corrosive effect on the democratic process," and the Brennan Center for Justice said the most significant new threat to elections was "the impact of generative AI on the information ecosystem."
The Federal Election Campaign Act prohibits fraudulent misrepresentation of federal candidates or political parties, but the law, written in 1971, is ambiguous when it comes to modern technologies such as AI.
In August, the Federal Election Commission approved a rulemaking petition from watchdog group Public Citizen calling for the law to be amended to clarify that it "applies to deliberately deceptive Artificial Intelligence (AI) campaign advertisements." That amendment was supported by the Democratic National Committee, as well as 52 Democratic members of Congress, but it was opposed by the Republican National Committee, which said that it was "not a proper vehicle for addressing this complex issue" and argued that it could violate the First Amendment.
The commission, which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans and is often split on matters of policy, has not yet voted on the proposal.
Social media platforms, for their part, are more decided.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, requires that "manipulated media" be labeled as such and that context be appended to the post. In March, Google, which owns YouTube, announced a policy requiring users posting videos to disclose when "content a viewer could easily mistake for a real person, place, scene or event" is "made with altered or synthetic media, including generative AI."
X's current policy was instituted in April 2023, well after Musk took over. It defines misleading media as content that is "significantly and deceptively altered, manipulated or fabricated" and that is "likely to result in widespread confusion on public issues." Such content, the policy states, must either be labeled or removed.
In the past, Musk has said that X's "Community Notes" feature should be used to alert the public to possible misleading information. On Friday night, Community Notes users, a select group that proposes and votes on such notices, debated whether to add one to Musk's post.
"This is an AI generated video of Vice President Kamala Harris using audio of clips that were never actually stated by the VP," read one suggested Community Note. "Videos like this are dangerous to those who cannot decipher AI-generated content from reality."
At least seven notes were proposed, but none had been added by Saturday evening to Musk's post or the original post, and neither post has been removed from the site. Although there have been numerous posts on X by third parties questioning his amplification of a deepfake video, Musk, who frequently replies directly to critics on the site, has so far remained silent on the issue.
With 191 million followers, Musk is the most influential voice on the platform and, arguably, on all of social media, and he is able to make almost any content go viral simply by reposting it.
Two weeks ago, he endorsed Trump in a post on X shortly after the presumptive Republican nominee was shot in the ear in an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. That post has been viewed 218 million times.
In a post Saturday afternoon, Musk used his account to boost a post by an anonymous user that said "wokeness is a threat to civilization." Within six minutes, it had already been viewed 481,000 times.