Does Elon Musk have to abide by his own code of conduct on X?
X’s guidelines prohibit manipulated and misleading media. And yet owner Elon Musk recently posted a video of Kamala Harris with an AI voice. Professor of Law and Digital Technologies Gerrit-Jan Zwenne talks to Dutch newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’ about what Musk is and is not allowed to post.
On 27 July, Elon Musk shared an edited version of Kamala Harris' campaign video. In it, an AI voice resembling that of Kamala Harris says the following: ‘I’m the ultimate diversity hire. I’m both a woman and a person of colour, so if you criticise anything I say, you’re both sexist and racist.’
This violates X's rules, which prohibit posting ‘synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm’. Posting this kind of content, however, is allowed if it’s clearly accompanied by a disclaimer specifying that it’s a parody or edited media. Musk did not add a disclaimer to his post, so what implications does this have?
Professor Zwenne says that X's guidelines partly came into being following pressure from the EU Digital Services Act: ‘That law obliges X to be transparent about these kinds of manipulated and misleading videos.’ Elon Musk, or X, is therefore obliged to add disclaimers to these kinds of posts. However, Professor Zwenne says that the actual impact of this EU regulation on Musk is debatable: ‘I doubt that any European regulator is going to enforce it. It’s primarily a matter for the US, anyway.’
Read the full article here (in Dutch).
Photo: Alexander Shetov through Unsplash