Widely Shared Audio of Vance Slamming Musk Is AI-Generated
What happened: A widely shared audio has Vice President JD Vance saying that Elon Musk is making the Trump administration “look bad” and has “the audacity to act like he is an elected official.” The audio, while sounding authentic, is an AI-generated fake.
A closer look: In the audio, a voice sounding like Vance’s says about Musk, the billionaire X owner who is leading the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the federal government:
“Everything that he’s doing is getting criticized in the media and he says that he’s helping and he’s not. He’s making us look bad. He’s making me look bad. And I’ll tell you this, and he wouldn’t like it if I said it. But he’s not even an American. He is from South Africa. He’s just cosplaying as this great American leader in a room that has the portraits of some of the greatest men that ever ran this country, and he has the audacity to act like he is an elected official. I am an elected official.”
The Vance voice continues: “I am an important one in this situation, not him. So, if he wants to tank the economy and his cars, maybe that’s what he deserves.”
You can listen to the audio here:
Where it spread: The first account to publish the audio appears to be anti-Trump TikTok account @josey6529, which posted the audio with the caption, “Leaked J.D. Vence [sic] audio on Elon Musk.” The March 23 post received 1.9 million views and 144,700 likes by the next day, when the post was deleted.
X user @cwebbonline, who states in his bio that he is a “Lifelong Dem,” posted the audio on March 23 with the caption: “Leaked audio of JD Vance in a jealous rant… Let’s just say JD Vance is no fan of Elon Musk and thinks he makes him look bad. But the truth is—Trump and Vance don’t need Elon to make them look bad.” The post garnered 1.4 million views and 17,000 likes in one day.
Liberal website DailyKos.com (NewsGuard Trust Score: 45/100) published a March 24 story titled “Vance caught crapping on Elon” that stated: “Sure, it’s an unverified audio recording. But it sure sounds like Vance’s scummy voice. And it sure runs at the pace, with the inflection, we would all recognize as Vance. So, until demonstrated otherwise, I’m saying this is Vance.” The site did not respond to NewsGuard’s request seeking comment on the article, which has not been corrected.
Actually: The audio is fake, according to AI detection tools and Vance himself.
Lead Stories (Trust Score: 100/100), which first fact-checked the claim, said that it ran the audio through two detection tools and found that it was “likely a deepfake.” One tool, the DeepFake-O-Meter audio detector, found with 100 percent certainty that the audio was AI-generated, Lead Stories reported.
NewsGuard tested the audio in AI-detector Resemble AI, which also concluded that the audio was fake.
In response to an X post with the fabricated recording, Vance stated, “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!”