Several crosswalks in California were recently hacked to play mocking messages about Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg using AI-generated voices mimicking the executives. The incidents occurred in three tech-heavy cities: Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Redwood City.
In Palo Alto, city officials discovered the issue on Saturday morning when an employee noticed a malfunctioning voice announcement feature at one crosswalk. Upon further investigation, they found 12 additional crosswalks were affected. The voice feature was subsequently disabled until repairs could be made. “Other traffic signals in the City were checked and the impact is isolated,” said Palo Alto spokesperson Meghan Horrigan-Taylor.
Hacked Messages Content
Pedestrians captured videos of the hacked messages on social media. In one video, an AI-generated Musk voice said, “You know, they say money can’t buy happiness… But it can buy a Cybertruck, and that’s pretty sick, right?” Another clip featured the AI Musk voice asking, “Hi, I’m Elon. Can we be friends? Will you be my friend? I’ll give you a Cybertruck, I promise.”
AI-generated Zuckerberg voices were also used in the hack. One clip featured the synthetic voice saying, “Hey, it’s Zuck here. I’m proud of everything we’ve been building together. From undermining democracy to making the world less safe for trans people. Nobody does it better than us.” Another Zuckerberg voice clip stated, “It’s normal to feel uncomfortable as we forcefully insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience. You don’t need to worry because there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
Context and Background
The hack appears to be related to recent controversies surrounding Musk and Zuckerberg. Both have faced criticism for their support of former President Donald Trump. Musk has become a close ally of Trump’s since his return to the White House and was a significant financial backer of his campaign. Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last year and Meta was among the first companies to donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Tesla has global engineering and AI offices in Palo Alto, while Meta is headquartered in Menlo Park. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Zuckerberg’s philanthropic organization, is based in Redwood City – the same city that saw a Tesla Cybertruck vandalization incident in January.
As of Monday afternoon, city officials had not commented on how the crosswalks were altered or identified any suspects. The incident highlights growing concerns about AI misuse and vulnerability of public infrastructure to hacking.
