Elon Musk made waves over the weekend after sharing an AI-generated video of presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris making ridiculous remarks. The video sparked a debate about what role fake images play in persuading potential voters. While many likely didn't think this new video of Harris was real, it's just the latest example of Musk trying to interfere in the election campaign to help elect Donald Trump.
Trump supporters have been on the defensive since Biden backed down and endorsed Harris, who is currently soaring in the polls amid a wave of relief across the country. After months of Trump looking unstoppable, the mood has shifted so much that the public is simply pointing out the inherent oddities of people like his running mate, J.D. Vance. Republicans are, to put it mildly, completely scared.
But now Musk and his fellow weirdos have started fighting back, doing everything they can to paint Harris as bad or irrational, including with a video of the AI that the billionaire shared on Friday with the caption “This is awesome.”
The video begins with the fake Harris mispronouncing her own name, a common mistake that AI makes, but which may not be a strong signal to Trump supporters that she's inauthentic — Trump himself frequently mispronounces her name, and admitted at a recent rally that he knows the correct pronunciation but doesn't use it.
From there on, the video is nothing more than a string of racist claims and absurd misinformation.
“I was chosen because I'm the ultimate diversity hire. I'm a woman and a person of color. So if you criticize anything, I say you're sexist and racist,” fake Harris says in the video.
With a history of making extremely racist comments, Musk clearly knows a thing or two about racism.
This is amazing😂
pic.twitter.com/KpnBKGUUwn— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 26, 2024
While Musk shared the video with the clear intent of trying to get a fascist elected, some Democrats overreacted to the tweet and got it wrong, threatening to ban politically themed AI videos altogether, with California Governor Gavin Newsom making it most serious by saying he would introduce legislation within the coming weeks.
“Manipulating voices in these 'ads' should be illegal. I will sign legislation in coming weeks to make sure it is illegal,” Newsom tweeted.
Musk retorted in his usual embarrassing fashion.
“I just checked with Professor Sagon Deesnutz, a world renowned authority, and he says parody is legal in the US,” Musk tweeted.
Musk is a terrible person, but he's right in this particular case. Even Musk's fans, the stupidest and most gullible of people, would never have thought that this video reflected what Harris actually said. And a free society needs to have room for people to make parody videos that make fun of elected officials.
That said, we also need guardrails around the use of AI in any area, including political messaging. AI technology cannot be used to actively stop people from exercising their rights. In one recent example, someone on the Dean Phillips campaign used AI to record an audio recording of Biden and send it as a robocall in New Hampshire during the primary. The fake Biden was telling people not to vote because it wasn't necessary, which is clearly not allowed.
Musk has spent the past few years trying to push far-right candidates into office and, while he has derided Trump in the past, is now an ardent Trump supporter. But he is no man of principle except for his own profit, and he believes Trump can provide tangible economic benefits and the racist policies he would like to see implemented at the US-Mexico border.
On Monday, Musk posted some extremely racist tweets that would have once been shocking but are now just noise on the pro-Nazi site that used to be called Twitter, and they're not likely to stop even if Harris wins in November.
The Biden-Harris administration is importing huge numbers of voters https://t.co/p0OQM0RWpt
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2024
Neither Musk nor the Harris campaign immediately responded to requests for comment Monday. Gizmodo will update this story if we hear back.