Trump, Musk Appear to Speak From Hacked Crosswalks

Officials in three California cities are trying to work out how voices mocking President Trump, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg were added to crosswalks. The crosswalks appear to have been hacked with the sole purpose of mocking the billionaires with AI-generated voices, per Business Insider. The audio message, "Walk sign is on," is usually broadcast from crosswalks to assist people who are visually impaired. But residents in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Redwood City, instead heard AI-generated voices of Meta CEO Zuckerberg boasting of "undermining democracy" and "making the world less safe for trans people"; Tesla CEO Musk cursing and complaining that he has no friends; and Trump telling Musk, "Sweetie, come back to bed."

In clips shared on social media, a Musk-esque voice says, "People keep saying cancer is bad, but have you ever tried being a cancer? It's f---ing awesome." A voice like Zuckerberg's says, "It's normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcefully insert AI into every, every facet of your conscious experience. And I just want to assure you, you don't need to worry, because there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. Anyway, see ya." "It's very cool protest art," one witness tells KTVU. "I have no idea how they did it." A Palo Alto city employee noticed the issue at one crosswalk on Saturday before officials discovered another 12 were affected, per BI.

A city rep said the crosswalks' voice announcement feature was temporarily disabled in response to an apparent hack on Friday. As of Saturday evening, officials in Redwood City were also aware of odd audio messages coming from the city's crosswalks, with deputy city manager Jennifer Yamaguma noting staff were "actively working to investigate and resolve the issue as quickly as possible." Redwood City is home to Zuckerberg's philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, while Palo Alto hosts global engineering and AI offices for Tesla. Menlo Park is home to Meta headquarters. It's a fairly mild inconvenience for the cities, which will now know to install anti-infiltration devices on crosswalk systems, a retired FBI agent tells CBS News. (More California stories.)