Elon Musk has been hit by two ‘fake news’ warnings from his own site after a video of alleged electoral fraud in Venezuela.
The tech billionaire, who was also slammed for sharing a manipulated video that mimics the voice of Vice President Kamala Harris, was seemingly duped by the clip that he reshared on his X platform.
Venezuela is in a worrying state of limbo right now as both the incumbent leader and his opposition have claimed victory in a presidential election.
Musk has waded in by claiming there was “major election fraud” by Nicolas Maduro, who is claiming victory despite in a highly-disputed election result over retired diplomat Edmundo González, who was polling far higher pre-election.
The Telsa boss wrote “this is messed up” when sharing a video that claimed Maduro’s ‘Chavista’ supporters were raiding a local voting station and forcibly taking away ballot boxes.
But there was a very visible problem.
Several foreign governments, including the U.S. and the European Union, held off recognizing the election results.
Nine South American countries have called for a “complete review” of the results and an emergency meeting of the Organisation of American States (OAS).
This comes after Musk shared an AI video on his social media platform X on Friday evening without explicitly noting it was originally released as a parody.
The video uses many of the same visuals as a real ad that Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, released last week launching her campaign. But the video swaps out the voice-over audio with another voice that convincingly impersonates Harris.
“I, Kamala Harris, am your Democrat candidate for president because Joe Biden finally exposed his senility at the debate,” the voice says in the video.
It claims Harris is a “diversity hire” because she is a woman and a person of color, and it says she doesn’t know “the first thing about running the country.” The video retains “Harris for President” branding and adds in some authentic past clips of her.
The original user who posted the video, a YouTuber known as Mr Reagan, has disclosed both on YouTube and on X that the manipulated video is a parody.
But Musk’s post, which has been viewed more than 123 million times, according to the platform, only includes the caption “This is amazing” with a laughing emoji.
