Spreading Deepfakes

Elon Musk’s X Is Spreading Deepfakes of Kamala Harris

Two phony videos seen by tens of millions of users appear to violate X’s own terms of service.

Julianne McShane

For the second time in less than two weeks, a doctored video of Vice President Kamala Harris has spread widely on Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

A video known as a “deepfake” that was posted on X on Saturday appears to show Harris repeating herself over and over again, using a crude audio rendering made to seem like Harris is struggling to finish a complete sentence. The altered video uses footage from an appearance by Harris and President Joe Biden following Friday’s historic prisoner swap that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and others. The video is obviously manipulated and easily debunked by viewing the unaltered footage (you can watch that here at about the 1:30 mark), which shows Harris speaking smoothly, without repeating the same words and phrases as portrayed in the doctored video.

The video, whose origin is unclear, was posted by Trump himself on Truth Social on Saturday, accompanied by a rant in which he calls Harris “DUMB!” and “extremely Low IQ.” The video was soon re-shared on X by an account that posts content verbatim from Trump’s feed on Truth Social. That account on X has more than 800,000 followers, and, as of late Sunday, the post containing the Harris deepfake had drawn more than 620,000 views.

The video appears to be in violation of X’s terms of service, which prohibit the sharing of “synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.” (It also appears to violate Truth Social’s terms of service, which requires that posts “are not false, inaccurate, or misleading”—a tall order, perhaps, given that platform’s owner.)

This latest deepfake comes after one shared by Musk himself eight days earlier, which doctored a high-profile Harris political ad titled “Freedom.” In that one, the fake audio using Harris’s voice depicted her calling herself “the ultimate diversity hire” and degrading President Biden. “This is amazing,” Musk wrote in his post sharing the video, accompanied by a laughing emoji. Musk’s post, still online, has received more than 134 million views.

When asked for comment about the latest video falsely showing Harris garbling her words, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung doubled down on the content, claiming that the obviously phony video was authentic. (“Your phone or computer must be fucked up,” he said.) Cheung did not respond to questions about who may have doctored the video and whether Trump’s post on Truth Social violates that platform’s terms of service.

Spokespeople for X did not respond to emailed questions about these videos violating the site’s terms of service, whether X is taking any steps to crack down on deepfakes, or why the one posted by Musk on July 26 remains online.

Other forms of disinformation targeting Harris, including racist and misogynistic content, have proliferated across social media. But the reach personally enjoyed by Musk and Trump through the platforms they own is bigger than that of most.

As Harris has been steadily gaining on Trump in recent polls, the spread of deepfakes targeting her on X seems no coincidence alongside Musk’s evolving views about Trump. He once declared the ex-president too old to hold office again. Now Trump has Musk’s “full endorsement.”