City officials have yet to identify anyone they suspect who could be behind the hack
April 15, 2025 at 11:14
- Crosswalk buttons in three California cities were hacked with AI voices mocking billionaires.
- Messages featured bizarre impersonations of Musk and Zuckerberg using generated voices.
- Officials have disabled the hacked messages and are working to repair the affected intersections.
Public protests targeting tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are nothing new. Posters, picket signs, and viral tweets have all been in heavy rotation. But lately, someone with a particular grudge, not to mention a flair for creative sabotage, took things a step further by hacking crosswalk buttons in several cities around Silicon Valley.
Instead of playing a normal chime, several crosswalk buttons in Palo Alto, Redwood City, and Menlo Park read out a script with AI-generated voices of Musk and Zuckerberg. Some of the messages are slightly more lighthearted than others, but there are several poking fun at the two billionaires.
Watch: Furious Protesters Smash A Tesla To Pieces In ‘Everyone Hates Elon’ Event
In one message, the crosswalk button says, “Hi, this is Elon Musk. Welcome to Palo Alto, the home of Tesla engineering. You know, they say money can’t buy happiness. And, yeah, OK, I guess that’s true; God knows I’ve tried. But it can buy a Cybertruck, and that’s pretty sick, right.”
You Can Feel The Vitriol
Another was also filmed mocking Musk. It says, “Hi, I’m Elon. Can we be friends? Will you be my friend? I’ll give you a Cybertruck, I promise. Okay, look, you don’t know the level of depravity I would stoop to just for a crumb of approval. I mean, let’s be real, it’s not like I had any moral convictions to begin with.” According to Palo Alto Online, another imitating Musk said, “You know, people keep saying cancer is bad, but have you tried being a cancer? It’s f**king awesome.”
Other messages aimed at Zuckerberg, the man behind Meta. One crosswalk in Menlo Park was hacked to say, “Hi, it’s Zuck here. I just wanted to tell you how very proud I am of everything we’ve been building together. From undermining democracy to cooking our grandparents’ brains with AI slop, to making the world less safe for trans people, nobody does it better than us – and I think that’s pretty neat.”
According to a City of Palo Alto spokesperson, the hack affected 12 intersections. The altered messages were quickly removed, and maintenance crews are already working on restoring normal function. In Redwood City, officials found four compromised locations and also disabled the “unauthorized messages.”
No word yet on who’s behind the hack or whether your microwave is next in line to stage a protest of its own.
Screenshot Bulou.Varanisese/NBC YouTube
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