Crosswalk signals hacked with AI messages impersonating Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg

By Amanda Hari

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    SAN FRANCISCO, California (KPIX) — This weekend, crosswalk signals in several Peninsula cities were hacked.

Instead of telling people to wait for the light to change colors, there were AI-generated messages impersonating Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

There were reports of the AI messages in Menlo Park, Redwood City and Palo Alto.

Bulou Varanisese was one of many people who saw the videos trending on social media, but she was skeptical that it was real.

She decided to come down to University Avenue in Palo Alto and check it out herself.

“It’s a curious thing for me and I chased my curiosity. It never hurts to press a button, right?” Varanisese said.

So she pressed it and heard an AI version of Elon Musk’s voice say, “This is Elon Musk. Welcome to Palo Alto, the home of Tesla Engineering.”

She says she was shocked, then she thought it may have been intentionally put there.

“I thought ‘Oh, this is a newer way to advertise,'” Varanisese said.

She first interpreted the message as a Tesla product plug.

“You know they say, ‘Money can’t buy happiness’ and yeah, OK, I guess that’s true,” said the AI voice of Musk. “God knows I’ve tried, but it can buy a Cybertruck, and that’s pretty sick, right?”

She said it made her laugh, but then she had a second thought.

“After the amusement of it all I was like, ‘Oh OK, it’s definitely a security concern,'” Varanisese said.

Retired FBI Agent Jeff Harp says people shouldn’t be too concerned. That part of the crosswalk isn’t that sophisticated of a system.

Harp said this hack will result in the cities taking more safety precautions after a fairly mild inconvenience.

“What this will do is it will bring it to the attention of the people who are putting these devices on the street, street lights, crosswalks and those sorts of things and they’ll say, ‘Hey wait a minute, we did need to install some anti-infiltration devices on them,'” Harp said.

Harp said you’ll never stop 100% of these types of hacks, but it is a reminder for everyone to protect their individual technological property.

“The biggest takeaway from things like this is protect your passwords, don’t open emails you don’t recognize,” he said. “All of these things.”

There were also some messages from an AI version of Mark Zuckerberg at some Palo Alto and Menlo Park locations.

“Hi this is Mark Zuckerberg, but the real ones call me the Zuck,” said one of the AI voices.

It goes on to acknowledge this strange and slightly violating use of AI.

“I just want to assure you there’s no need to worry because there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it,” the voice said.

But overall, Varanisese enjoyed the experience.

“I think it did add a layer of fun back to Palo Alto in a weird way because it’s been quite stiff here,” Varanisese said.

About a dozen intersections in Palo Alto were impacted, the audible feature will stay disabled until the city can finish repairing them.

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