Elon Musk, the owner of X, retweeted a parody Kamala Harris campaign ad Friday without labeling it as misleading, an apparent violation of his own platform’s rules.
Portions of video footage in the altered content — such as Harris speaking to crowds, and general videos of her supporters — were used in a recent Harris’ campaign video on YouTube. Most notably, the altered content uses a voice over that sounds like the vice president, making it seem like she is calling Biden senile and herself an incompetent presidential candidate.
In the original video, Harris narrates, telling viewers, “In this election, we each face a question: what kind of country do we want to live in?” before breaking into Beyonce’s song “Freedom.”
The altered video reposted by Musk does not include Beyonce. Instead, a voice that sounds like Harris’ begins by saying, “I Kamala Harris am your Democrat candidate for president because Joe Biden finally exposed his senility at the debate.”
The voice goes on to say that Harris was selected because she is “the ultimate diversity hire” as she’s both a woman and a person of color.
“So if you criticize anything I say you’re both sexist and racist,” the voice continues.
The video then accuses Harris of “trying to sound Black” and doing a “Barack Obama impression” in her speeches.
The video comes as Republicans across the country this week have accused Harris of being the “DEI candidate,” with some alluding to her race and gender as reasons why she was selected to be the Democratic presidential nominee.
In a statement, Harris campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg blasted Musk and former President Donald Trump, saying, “We believe 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.”
It was not immediately clear if the video is a product of artificial intelligence. It was originally posted by a YouTube account by the name of “Mr Reagan,” which labeled it as a parody.
Alexios Mantzarlis, the director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech, Cornell University’s graduate campus in New York City, indicated to NBC News that the altered content may be considered a deepfake, generally defined as misleading content using artificial intelligence.
“In recent-ish elections in Argentina, India and elsewhere, we saw deepfakes being used primarily for this type of surface-level deception that’s more akin to trolling memes than to legitimate misinformation,” Mantzarlis said. “I expect we’ll see plenty of this in the US for the next 100 days” until the November election.
There is no official label on Musk’s retweet indicating that the video is a parody or manipulated, which may violate X’s own policy regarding misleading content.
“You may not share synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm (“misleading media”),” the policy states. “In addition, we may label posts containing misleading media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context.”
This is not the first time altered voice content has appeared during this presidential campaign. Earlier this year, a political consultant ordered up a robocall that impersonated President Joe Biden falsely discouraging people from participating in New Hampshire’s primary election.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, accused Musk of violating his company’s own policy.
In a post on X, she wrote, “If @elonmusk and X let this go and don’t label it as altered AI content, they will not only be violating X’s own rules, they’ll be unleashing an entire election season of fake AI voice and image-altered content with no limits, regardless of party.”
X and Elon Musk have not immediately responded to requests for comment.
Musk’s retweet of the video has been viewed 119.9 million times as of Sunday afternoon, and 166,000 on Mr Reagan’s YouTube account.
In the wake of an attempted assassination against Trump earlier this month, Musk formally endorsed the former president’s campaign.
