X policy states that posts that are fake of another person violate it
Comments on a Video Spoofing Kamala Harris: X owner Elon Musk’s Response to a Senator’s Message on Twitter
Meta requires that manipulated media be labelled as such and that context be appended to the post. In March of this year, the owner of the video-sharing site announced a policy which required users to make clear when the video was made with altered or synthetic media.
X owner Elon Musk shared a deepfake video spoofing a campaign ad for Vice President Kamala Harris. It appears to violate the platform’s own policies against synthetic and manipulated media.
Mr. Musk has said that X should use the community notes feature to alert the public on misleading information. The Community Notes users, a select group that suggests and votes on notices, debated on Friday whether to add one to Mr. Musk’s post.
The vice president used the words from the original ad instead of mimicking Ms. Harris, saying that she is not well-versed in running the country as a woman and a person of color.
With 191 million followers, Mr. 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 Mr. 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. The post has been viewed 218 million times.
On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Musk used his account to boost a post from an anonymous user who wrote thatokeness is a threat to civilization. Within 6 minutes, it was viewed 481,000 times.
The account that uploaded the video on Friday noted in its post that the video was a parody. When Mr. 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.
Deep Fakes: A Campaign to End the Cascade of Demagogy in the Electoral Insights into the Future of Artificial Intelligence
The clip was edited to remove the images of Mr. Biden, as well as the images of Donald J. Trump, and Senator Vance of Ohio. The original ad, which Harris campaign released on Thursday, is titled “We Choose Freedom.”
Mr. 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. Vice President Harris is providing real freedom,opportunity and security to the American people instead of the fake, manipulated lies of Musk and Trump, said the Harris campaign in a statement.
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.
Voters weren’t allowed to participate in the New Hampshire Democratic primary because of a call using technology that mimicked Mr. Biden’s voice. The political consultant who orchestrated the calls was later indicted on state charges of impersonating a candidate and voter suppression. During the Republican primary this year there were many fake videos depicting Hillary Clinton endorsing Ron DeSantis or announcing his early withdrawal from the race.
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 A.I. on the information ecosystem.”
Last August, the Federal Election Commission approved a rule-making petition from the 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.
Lament on Musk and X CEO Yaccarino: “I’m sorry to hear about X, but I can’t help it”
The post is also the latest fire that X CEO Linda Yaccarino may be tasked with squashing after her boss’s actions. X did not immediately provide a response to a request for comment on Musk’s post.
Musk said he checked with a renowned world authority, and he said that it is legal in America for people to make fun of each other.