FAKE NEWS

Influencer Uses Grimes AI—and Fake Diss Track—to Troll Elon Musk

“Fuck a Tesla, I like a Honda / and fuck an X, double entendre.”

In a viral video stunt debuting earlier this week on TikTok, influencer and social media provocateur Elijah Daniel shared footage from a music video apparently shot with Grimes—and in which the singer appears to call out her ex, Elon Musk, with a mic drop-worthy verse: “Fuck a Tesla, I like a Honda / and fuck an X, double entendre.” The catch? Those vocals are AI-generated—from tech Grimes herself debuted last year with an open invitation for folks to reimagine her vocals, Daniel confirmed in an interview Friday with Rolling Stone. (The woman featured in his video clip was simply a “blonde friend,” he explained.) That numerous news sites shared Daniel's fake footage as the real deal was the point, Daniel said— “I wanted to see how many people would believe it off the bat,” he told the magazine. “I would love to say the majority of people are smart enough to not fall for AI misinformation, but they’re falling for human misinformation.” Musk himself surprised many by coming out in favor of California's proposed rules to regulate AI earlier this week—perhaps he saw moments like this coming, then?