Crosswalk buttons in at least three California cities appear to have been hacked this weekend—replacing standard safety audio with bizarre, AI-generated voices mimicking tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. In Palo Alto, city officials confirmed that twelve downtown intersections were affected. The voice features, designed to assist people with vision impairments, are now disabled while repairs are underway.
However, a city spokesperson assures that “The signals otherwise work as they should.” One viral clip from Emerson Street and University Avenue features a Musk impersonation saying: “Hi, this is Elon Musk. Welcome to Palo Alto, the home of Tesla Engineering. You know, they say money can’t buy happiness, and yeah, okay, 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.”
A separate video, featuring a simulated Zuckerberg voice, boasts: “From undermining democracy to cooking our grandparents’ brains with AI slop, to — to making the world less safe for trans people… Zuck out!” Redwood City and Menlo Park are also reporting similar hacks. In Redwood City, officials are actively investigating. For many in the LGBTQ community, the fake Zuckerberg line about making the world less safe for trans people hits a nerve—mocking real concerns about the role of Big Tech in spreading anti-trans rhetoric. As these tech CEOs continue to shape the digital world, some say this prank feels uncomfortably close to the truth.
