Elon Musk shares manipulated Harris video, in seeming violation of X’s policies

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has waded into one of the thorniest issues facing U.S. politics: deepfake videos.

On Friday night, Musk, the 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 she is the “ultimate diversity hire.”

In addition, the clip was edited to remove images of former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, 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 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 called out the post. “This is a violation of @X’s policies on synthetic media & misleading identities,” Alex Howard, 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 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.”

X’s 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 be labeled or removed.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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