Featured Image Credit: Andrew Harnik / Staff / Getty
An AI clip of vice president JD Vance backtalking Elon Musk has gone viral on social media.
The audio clip which has racked up 5 million views on X (formerly Twitter) features JD Vance criticising the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
"He says that he's helping and he's not," the speaker says, adding "he's making us look bad, he's making me look bad."
The AI-generated Vance goes on to say: “He’s not even an American. He is from South Africa. And he’s cosplaying as this great American leader.”
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It continues: "He has the audacity to act like he is an elected official. I am an elected official, I am the important one in this situation, not him.
"If he wants to tank the economy and his cars, maybe that's what he deserves."
In response to the clip, originally posted by X user Bishop Talbert Swan, JD Vance replied: "It's a fake AI-generated clip. I'm not surprised this guy doesn't have the intelligence to recognize this fact, but I wonder if he has the integrity to delete it now that he knows it's false.
"If not, it could be defamation. I guess we'll find out!"
Reports from the BBC, along with other sources and the X platform itself, have since verified that the clip was created using AI.
The audio is grainy and distorted, giving the impression it might have been secretly recorded. But there's also no clear source or explanation of how someone supposedly got access to a private recording of the vice president.
William Martin, the VP's communications director backed Vance up on the platform, writing: "This audio is 100% fake and most certainly not the Vice President."
But not everyone is convinced as some X users are still questioning whether it’s really fake or just a cover-up.
"ngl if this is ai, is the most realistic ai deepfake of a voice i’ve ever heard," one commented.
"Maybe it is AI-fake, who knows? You denying it definitely makes it more, not less likely it is real," another chimed in and someone else argued: "The fact that you had to post a denial is incredibly suspicious."
Meanwhile, others are saying the audio 'doesn’t sound like Vance' and it's 'absolutely fake.'
And this kind of situation might become more common. A report from Humanize AI noted that the use of AI deepfake tools shot up by 44% in 2023, with another 28% growth in 2024. In particular, AI Voice Generator platforms saw a spike in traffic, drawing in over 16.8 million visits.
