Does Elon Musk now also want to buy Meta? No!

As fact-checkers, we must always stay one step ahead of fake creators, or at least on par, especially as harder-to-see methods like deepfakes become increasingly popular.
A current example is a short video with Elon Musk, who apparently now wants to buy Meta after Twitter. But the video was created with a deepfake app; he doesn't say that in the original video!

The video

In the short video, Elon Musk appears to say: “ I predict that I will buy the entire META company tomorrow!” Facebook and Instagram will be mine too “, in German: “I predict that I will buy the entire META company tomorrow! Facebook and Instagram will also be mine.”

The video can be found on Instagram , for example, and because of the account name “elonmusksocial”, many people seem to believe that it is an official Musk account, which is not the case.

Check out this post on Instagram

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusksocial)

The video appeared for the first time on TikTok ... and the account that published the video leads even those who are not familiar with a certain app on the right track.

___STEADY_PAYWALL___

The original video

Of course, Musk doesn't say this in the original video from which the video sequence comes. You can check it yourself:

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Musk can be seen in several places in the video like in the short excerpt, for example at position 14:43 of the video.

The original video comes from a TED talk from April 2022, the transcript of the conversation can be found HERE .

By the way, Musk couldn't even buy Meta if he wanted to: he currently has assets of $155.8 billion (as of December 21st), while Meta currently (as of December 21st) has a market value of over $300 billion .

What else Musk can say

Let's go back to the TikTok account that first published the video, because Musk says completely different things there:

@become.some Wtf? Is Elon going to Mars already?🤔 #elonmusk #elonmusknews #elonmuskmemes #mars #spacex ♬ original sound – become.some

Hui, so he's already selling the first tickets for flights to Mars? Craziness! But he apparently confessed something else:

@become.some Elon falls in love with Jolie😱❣️ #elonmusknews #elonmuskmemes #elonmusk #tesla #spacex #angelinajolie ♬ original sound – become.some

How sweet! Elon is in love with Angelina Jolie and bought her a gift! But it gets even better, because in another interview Musk apparently said something that warmed our hearts... and you can see what's going on by looking at the little watermark:

The solution to the puzzle: a deepfake app!

The TikTok account from which the distributed video comes advertises a certain app in the bio:

“ Try the free app with which you can let any celebrity say anything, ” the app is advertised in English, and the videos from the TikTok account also show many examples, which, however, were subsequently edited: For example, it is missing. B. always the logo of the app, and the voice has sometimes been improved, e.g. B. provided with a reverb and text.

Conclusion

The original TikTok video (see HERE ) was created using an app that allows you to put all sorts of phrases into the mouths of celebrities. In the popular version, the TikTok watermark with the account name was also removed in order to disguise its origin. In fact, Musk never said he wanted to take over Meta.

To get back to the beginning of the article: This is exactly why, as a fact checker, you always have to be one step ahead of the fake creators or at least on an equal footing. Because if you know the methods of the fake creators, you can recognize their fakes much better.

Also interesting: Who invented it?
No, not the Swiss. A Tyrolean company has been selling the system behind Klimagie for years. – Climatology with quantum technology is an old joke