Hacker Hijacks Crosswalk Buttons to Mock Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg

A crosswalk button usually plays a beeping sound or a monotonous message. But over the weekend, several crosswalk systems in California’s Silicon Valley were hacked to play AI-generated audio clips of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg mocking themselves.

“Hi this is Mark Zuckerberg, but real ones call me the Zuck,” one of the hijacked crosswalks told a pedestrian in Menlo Park, California, where Meta is based.

“It’s normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcefully insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience,” the audio clip continued.

Audio recordings have also been spotted at crosswalks in Redwood City and Palo Alto. Video clips of the messages have since gone viral on social media.

“Hi, I’m Elon, will you be my friend? I’ll give you a Cybertruck, I promise,” one of the clip says, using AI to authentically deepfake the Tesla CEO’s voice.

“You know they say money can’t buy happiness,” a separate clip of Musk says. “And yeah, I guess that’s true. God knows I’ve tried. But it can buy a Cybertruck, and that’s pretty sick, right? Right? F— I’m so alone.”

It’s unclear who’s behind the apparent hacktivism. Both billionaire CEOs have faced public backlash, especially Musk over his support for President Trump and efforts to cut federal government jobs. According to Palo Alto Online, officials in the affected cities are investigating and have even temporarily shut down the voice announcement feature on the crosswalks.

Recommended by Our Editors

The crosswalk buttons might belong to Polara, a Texas-based company that’s installed traffic signaling equipment in over 1,000 cities. The company also offers customers a wide catalog of audio messages that can be played on the company’s traffic equipment.

Polara didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But on X, one person noted that the company’s instruction manual says its equipment uses a factory default password of 1234 when connecting over Bluetooth through Polara’s “Field Service” Android app, meaning it could be easily hacked.

Get Our Best Stories!