Crosswalks are being hacked to imitate tech billionaires

Welcome to your Friday edition of TMA. It’s a public holiday where I’m from, so it’s a shorter briefing than usual. Barring a barrage of new cars (tariffs? shh!) revealed at the New York International Auto Show, it’s been a relatively quiet week, but not without a bit of drama.

“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? …Right?? Fuck, I’m so alone.” That’s what a pretty realistic AI voice clone of Elon Musk was saying to pedestrians at crosswalks in Palo Alto. An AI Mark Zuckerberg joined him, with both billionaires’ voices mimicked to say, well, the things a lot of us are thinking, whether it’s the invasive AI push, billionaires wielding power over government or other bleak, beige real-world versions of Black Mirror premises.

They were in operation at downtown intersections in Redwood City, Menlo Park and Palo Alto but were gone, sadly, by Saturday.

No one’s staked a claim to the prank — but there are probably many people in Silicon Valley capable of pulling it off. More recently, an AI clone of Jeff Bezos was talking on Seattle crosswalks.

— Mat Smith

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