Video of Elon Musk high on an edible is a deepfake

By: Nikolaj Kristensen
July 5 2023

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Context

A video on social media supposedly shows Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of Twitter, intoxicated after ingesting an edible, a food product infused with marijuana. 

In the 14-second video, Musk says: “I just dropped like a 150 mg edible and, uh, I’m feeling f*cking zooted. Honestly, I’m feeling, like, on the top floor right now. I’m about to design like 30 new f*cking space cars and get us to Mars.” 

In 2018, Musk smoked a cannabis joint live on Joe Rogan’s podcast show, causing Tesla shares to drop. However, the current video is a deep fake. 

In Fact

The video is watermarked @plattepus, leading to a TikTok account where the video was uploaded on December 25, 2022, a couple of months after Musk took over as CEO of Twitter. The TikTok user also has a Twitter account of the same name where the deep fake was posted on December 11, 2022. During December, multiple other deep fakes were uploaded on the Twitter page depicting Musk, Joe Rogan, and Andrew Tate. 

One video on the user’s YouTube account, “Elon Musk Goes on Omegle,” bears the description: “Deepfake Elon Musk goes on OmeTV, using AI face/voice filter. Subscribe for more AI parody videos.” 

The deep fake on TikTok and Twitter currently making rounds does not have a similar disclaimer. 

On Twitter, Plattepus describes himself as a comedian and an “AI guy.” According to the website, his Twitch account links to a website where he offers an AI video course teaching people how to deep fake faces and voices in real time. 

Logically Facts reached out to the user behind the Plattepus accounts for comment. 

The Verdict

The video of Elon Musk rambling after ingesting an edible is a deep fake. The user who made it has posted several other deep fake videos and offers a course on how to deep fake faces and voices. According to his Twitter page, he considers himself a comedian. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.