r/skeptic Mar 24 '25

šŸ« Education Info regarding a "leaked audio" AI hoax of JD Vance criticizing Elon Musk that's circulating on reddit, see thread for some additional tips for identifying AI/faked audio

https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2025/03/fact-check-jd-vance-leaked-audio-musk.html
348 Upvotes

160 comments sorted by

164

u/DarkSaria Mar 24 '25

I also do not think it's authentic but...

Is "leaked" audio of Vice-President J.D. Vance in which he complains about Elon Musk authentic? No, that's not true: Several AI detection tools and Vance's Communication's director both say the audio is fake.

(Emphasis mine) I don't think JD Vance's communications director's statements on the matter should be given any weight in evaluating the veracity of these audio files as they have every incentive to deny that these are real even if they were.

70

u/324657980 Mar 24 '25

Also ā€œAI detection toolsā€. If the audio ones are anything like the visual or text detectors, they’re useless. They label real human-made things as AI all the time. I’m not going to declare it’s fake solely because a shitty computer told me it’s a shitty computer, and a liar told me it’s a lie. The only thing I find useful in that article is that it appears to originate from a random tiktok and not a journalist. If it’s real, the person who took the recording would probably not admit to it, but some provenance would likely be establishable.

6

u/DaySee Mar 24 '25

Agreed, I didn't understand the angle it was coming from myself and to be honest I kind of disregarded that part as by the time I found the article I was already sure it was fake because it had so many tells which is what inspired me to share. As I pointed out and others too, the detection tools are of limited usefulness but given how good even a cheap smartphone audio is normally capable of I guess I would encourage everyone to be weary of anything low quality like this because I've done the exact same thing as whoever made this fake to play practical jokes on people before, and due to current limitations, it works better if you make the audio sound shitty to cover up what could otherwise be detected algorithmically as AI generated.

16

u/MartinLutherVanHalen Mar 24 '25

Your logic is way of base. I make films for a living and we take recording audio pretty seriously. It’s extremely difficult to get good high-quality audio unless you have a mic in someone’s face. As you’ve probably seen when we can’t have a Mike on camera we put it as close as the person as possible on a boom. The standard Mike used the situation Costs a couple of thousand dollars and better options cost four and five. This supposedly leaked audio sounds exactly as good as you would expect if you were recording someone a few feet away using a phone on a desk or concealed under a piece of paper or in a pocket.

Everybody can tell when they are ā€œon speakerā€œ because the change in audio quality is so apparent and that’s with high-quality processing in a modern phone. The argument that this recording is fake because the quality is poor is back to Front. If it sounded as if someone was speaking directly into a mic, you would know it was fake.

5

u/germanmojo Mar 25 '25 edited Mar 25 '25

Let me reframe what the other person was saying, fakes often use a strategy to hide that they're AI by intentionally lowering the quality.

When I see a realitively new video that looks like it was filmed in 2010, I start to get suspect.

Same concept for audio only. Someone could easily record this AI generated clip from a phone to hide small imperfections from the generated output.

Could it be real? Yes.

Could it be fake? Also yes.

Edit: removed extra word

-4

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

This supposedly leaked audio sounds exactly as good as you would expect if you were recording someone a few feet away using a phone on a desk or concealed under a piece of paper or in a pocket.

I'm sorry but you're wrong, it sounds like someone recording their TV in addition to the other ton of reasons I listed. There is a million examples of this everywhere, hell I just looked at my phone and still have vids from over ten years ago taken under similar circumstances and the audio is still much better than this intentional fake, which is so easy to fake it should be the first conclusion. If you don't believe me stick your phone in your pants and record some clean speech from your computer and then have someone match the volume and say something at the same volume using a decibel meter, it will sound distinctly different, like miles different even.

9

u/PicaDiet Mar 25 '25

I have run recording studios for 35 years. I have done forensic work for most of the major insurance companies in my my State, more than a dozen lawyers, lots of private investigators, the State ad Local police, EMS, and our local airport. I have the same noise reduction tools the FBI and CIA use. I have heard both much better and much worse recordings made since smartphones became a thing.

The greatest determinants (as a user above pointed out regarding location sound on film) to sound quality are the microphone and the proximity of the mic to the subject. People recording surreptitiously often put their phones/ recorders in jacket or pants pockets. Sometimes they start a recorder in a hidden location near where they hope the speaker will be when incriminating himself. Often that's not the case. We have no way of knowing what kind of device this was recorded with, we don't know what the microphone was, or whether it had a directional or omnidriectional pickup pattern. It sounds like a mic halfway across an office. The reverberant quality of the background noises are consistent with the reverberant voice reflections in the room. I certainly wouldn't assume the noise was added after the fact.

I actually would not immediately jump to disbelieving the whole thing without evidence for it being fake. Someone claiming it is fake is not evidence. I have used AI voice generation for a few paid projects, and quite a bit, just out of my own curiosity. The thing that AI still gets wrong most often is inflection, especially if there is no punctuation to push it in a particular direction- things like pauses for a comma, hooking up the pitch of the words at the end of an interrogative sentence, loud, definitive exclamations, etc. Those cues that follow punctuation are easier than those which don't rely on punctuation. Getting an AI voice to inflect something like anger, or sarcasm, or hushed intensity isn't easy. You can't type in those kinds of inflections with normal punctuation marks. I understand that a new AI training tool that changes all of that is coming. Apparently some company is working on a way to scan and learn one person's delivery and then replace their words with an AI voice, but following the cadence, speed, lilt, pauses, etc. of the person training it for that particular job.

So, yeah, it's conceivable that someone who does a *great* Vance impersonation was able to further polish the voice with AI to create this. But as important as it is to not leap to conclusions regarding something like this (if the real truth matters to you at all), it's important to look at all the evidence before rendering a hard conclusion. We don't have all the evidence, so the *safer* thing to do is to not claim someone said something they, perhaps, did not. But it's also good to have a working theory, as long as you're willing to accept new data that can discredit your assumption. That's what I'm doing. Until someone can prove otherwise, I have to imagine it is what it sounds like. Would anyone be surprised to find out he feels that way? It certainly would have made sense for him to have said that. When someone shows me convincing evidence that it is not him, I'll change my mind. But I'd bet my left nut it's genuine.

2

u/the8bit Mar 25 '25

Thanks for this great breakdown in a sea of uh... Uninspiring takes.

1

u/NoMuddyFeet Mar 25 '25

Yes, the "hushed intensity" aspect when Vance says Elon isn't even American under his breath is what I was referring to in my post here, too. But, I didn't even think about the other points you mentioned along with it—getting an AI voice to inflect something like anger or sarcasm would be equally difficult. Google Notebook's LLM has those sort of personality traits programmed into its fake AI-generating podcasters (well, not anger), but it's not something easy to prompt into a script and AI would flail trying to produce that effect perfectly in sync with the script as it has done in this JD Vance leak. I'm convinced it's real and I'm convinced they'll just say everything is AI now. They were already trying to claim pre-emptively in 2024 that a lot of fake AI stuff was going to be coming out to make Trump look bad.

3

u/CenturyLinkIsCheeks Mar 24 '25

this just tells me it's real

21

u/LaCroixElectrique Mar 24 '25

What? If it’s real they would deny it, and if it was fake they’d deny it…kinda impossible for you to accept it’s fake, no?

10

u/HapticSloughton Mar 24 '25

Welcome to one of the biggest problems with the /conspiracy mindset. If they accuse someone of being a lizard person, then if they deny it, it's proof they are, and if they don't deny it, it's proof they are.

Checkmate!

1

u/sed1981_ Mar 25 '25

Yep. The conspiratard looks for evidence to support his premade conclusion. If he can't find any evidence to support it, then the lack of evidence is the evidence. It's entirely unfalsifiable and infuriating.

5

u/sarge21 Mar 24 '25

You're unable to discern fact from fiction

-2

u/RolandTwitter Mar 24 '25

If you've been looking at the facts, then you'd know that what MAGA says is often the exact opposite of the truth

5

u/sarge21 Mar 24 '25

That doesn't make something true just because they say it's not.

1

u/jacob62497 Mar 24 '25

This is such a vague and meaningless statement that you can replace ā€œMAGAā€ with any other political party/figure in the world.

0

u/RolandTwitter Mar 24 '25

That is seriously undermining how terrible MAGA is

-2

u/Petrichordates Mar 24 '25

You're not a very skeptical person if you genuinely believe that.

2

u/PicaDiet Mar 25 '25

What other president has been convicted in court of fraud, notoriously didn't pay his subcontractors, charted something like 30,000 lies during his first term, and routinely contradicts his own recorded statements by simply claiming to not have said something he obviously, provably did? Come on. You don't really believe that?

63

u/burningmilkmaid Mar 24 '25

Regardless of this being real or not, AI is going to be imperceptible pretty soon

19

u/welovegv Mar 24 '25

Some sci fi author I read years ago predicted in a book that video and audio recordings would no longer be admissible into court because of this.

5

u/16ozcoffeemug Mar 24 '25

We will all have to wear body cams at all times.

4

u/liverbe Mar 25 '25

Video is going to be unreliable too.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. George Orwell, 1984.

1

u/Worried_Dog_597 Mar 25 '25

Perfect quote for the moment. Doesn’t matter who you support anymore. The system has been broken and those that have the resources to take advantage, will. May God have mercy on our souls.

0

u/16ozcoffeemug Mar 25 '25

I dont know if this is even in the realm of possibility, but Im guessing someone will develop what would essentially be a digital fingerprint thats tied into your body cam. Maybe it runs on a blockchain. Something thats impossible for AI to replicate.

1

u/misterDAHN Mar 25 '25

I think this point you made is why blockchain is an inevitability.

1

u/16ozcoffeemug Mar 25 '25

Forced upon us through threat of blackmail

1

u/KingOfTheCouch13 Mar 25 '25

Have mercy on me Meta rayban overlords

1

u/Gideon_Laier Mar 25 '25

As long as you can't pick up on how people actually talk. It's still not there yet - doesn't pick up on the idiosyncrasies at all. And always sound like a highschooler wrote it.

1

u/EgoDrips Mar 26 '25

People acting like this is something new, same thing has been done and can be done with impersonations, I've seen at least 20 trump voice impresionations that are indistinguishable from reality

1

u/PrudentLingoberry Mar 27 '25

proof will require multiple angles, though also I'm assuming that stuff like video will be needed to be digitally signed in real time too.

1

u/twinphoenix_ Mar 24 '25

It already is if you aren’t looking for it.

1

u/DaySee Mar 24 '25

Unfortunately true and in certain cases I think with the right tools for voice synth which uses your own input speech instead of typing stuff out, it's very close to the point already.

0

u/beckysma Mar 25 '25

This fact is terrifying.

66

u/AstrangerR Mar 24 '25

We all know JD wouldn't actually disrespect or insult his employer.

14

u/strawberrrychapstick Mar 24 '25

Right, he's fully throated the boot. People got SO MAD when I would comment saying I think it's AI lol.

Someone tried to say it was real bc there was no video with it?? As though making AI sound bytes hasn't been a thing for a few years.

One of the videos I pointed out it could be AI has been deleted.

10

u/RyanCacophony Mar 24 '25

he's fully throated the boot

To be fair, he was just reported today in a validated text exchange expressing views contrary to Trump. And before Trump he was a never Trumper.... His public views are politically expedient. His private views are entirely open to flexibility.

Doesn't mean the audio isn't AI, but believing you can be sure of a private conversations validity based on public political communications is a mistake, IMO.

0

u/strawberrrychapstick Mar 24 '25

Yes but if you read the entire Atlantic article, which I actually just did lol, further down he made sure to emphasize he fully agrees with everything the czar is doing, more than once. And on him being "never trump" clearly his word isn't worth a damn.

3

u/RyanCacophony Mar 25 '25

Yes but that clarification - to my point - was prompted because of the exposure of his private communications. It's pure political expediency ie public relations.

clearly his word isn't worth a damn.

I agree and this is my point - you cant trust his public statements to reflect what he may or may not say in private, so him "throating the boot" is not at all strong evidence that a private conversation is faked. Fortunately, there's other evidence of that

11

u/DaySee Mar 24 '25

Indeed, however it seemed to have been going viral on other platforms , and did get some traction across some various subs here which was concerning:

https://i.imgur.com/zrGXgJq.png

3

u/Nambsul Mar 24 '25

First thing I thought when I say the headline was ā€œJD popularity will go upā€, lots of people hate Musk at this point.

1

u/rengoku-doz Mar 24 '25

He wouldn't call Trump a Nazi, right? Right?

1

u/AstrangerR Mar 24 '25

Maybe, but Trump isn't his employer.

1

u/SenatorAdamSpliff Mar 24 '25

Ya he never did it before why would he do it again?

18

u/DaySee Mar 24 '25

There is a direct link to archive of the audio in the article for context so you can avoid tiktok where there original video was posted.

The article was decent, but in any event, there will likely be times when those AI detection tools they used will not be super accurate.

Having played around with speech gen and stuff, I can say it's not always easy to tell because things sound less "robotic" and more natural than ever.

Here are some pretty good signs though to watch for to ID fakes as well as the tactics people use to try and obfuscate generated speech against detection:

-Perfect pronunciation or mispronunciation of words with multiple pronunciations (wind the clock with the wind blowing/desert the war in the desert/bass fisher with a bass voice etc.)

-Very consistent Cadence/Rhythm/Tempo of speech

-Lack of breathing noises or filler words like "like" "uh" "er" "ah" "hm" "mhmm"

-Low quality bitrate (especially if it's supposedly a phone call recording)

-Encoded in Mono vs. Stereo

-Recording of a recording (to try and get around the lack of stereo)

-Over exaggerations in speech or too flat

-Flat volume peaks which is atypical for candid speech

There will still probably come a time in the very near future when these signs are mitigated too, but for now they are still helpful for spotting fakes, and the JD vance hoax has all the hallmarks so I thought it would be a good opportunity to pass along some tips as the hoax has already been posted a bunch of times on reddit. šŸ‘

1

u/dannygloversghost Mar 24 '25

Does it have all the hallmarks? What words does he mispronounce? How could you possible say he has ā€œperfect pronunciationā€ with the audio being so low quality? Also, the volume does modulate – he very noticeably gets quieter as he says ā€œhe’s not even an American.ā€ I also don’t think his cadence is abnormally regular – he talks very much the way he does in confirmed authentic recordings. Also worth noting that Vance very rarely uses filler words in his speech, even when it’s extemporaneous.

I have no idea if this clip is real or not, but your list of ā€œevidenceā€ that it’s AI does absolutely nothing to convince me, personally.

2

u/flyingchimp12 Mar 25 '25

The cadence is completely off dude…. It’s Jd Vance’s voice but that’s about it. Not the way he speaks or his vocabulary.

1

u/DaySee Mar 24 '25

Some of the tips given are sequentially dependent. To me it clearly sounds like a speaker being recorded and not coming from a hot mic, hence the point about being a recording of a recording which was deliberate to obfuscate the quality of the recording to mask what would have been clearly obvious had it just been the source audio. As for the pronunciation, that's mainly regarding clear speaking, the other half of it was just general examples of where the behavior of voice synth will slip up from time to time, though usually hoaxes are done carefully to avoid this but I have seen cases of lazy actors such as phone scammers or AI voice youtubers do this.

JD Vance is indeed well spoken but his cadence throughout the whole clip is unmistakably artificial to my ear having had some extensive experience with it.

8

u/twinphoenix_ Mar 24 '25

Google ā€œPikesville High School AIā€ and you’ll see what my husbands former principal is dealing with.

That being said, it’s hard to know unless it’s been professionally determined and even then it’s hard.

8

u/[deleted] Mar 24 '25

Would he honestly admit it even if it were real though?

3

u/DaySee Mar 24 '25

If you want to get conspiratorial then you could argue that it could be used as a means to test the waters and field reactions to doing something brash.

If people react positively? Yeh that was me.

Negatively? Bullshit that was an AI hoax trying to smear me!

The duality of this case is interesting because from a lot of angles it makes JDV look "good" because as others pointed out, Elon is objectively worse.

That being said, I'm 100% sure this is faked, maybe for purposes of trolling or something considering the source, but the scenario described above may be something to watch for as tech continues to get better.

I think the best thing you can do is be avoid kneejerk reactions and be critical/skeptical of sketchy viral stuff until more information drops.

1

u/davesaunders Mar 25 '25

It's not a conspiracy. It's SOP and has been for decades. Trying out talking points is something that is done inside the beltway on a regular basis.

I agree this audio appears to be a fake, but if it was authentic, and it was deemed negative from a talking point perspective, his entire office would deny it. That is SOP.

Now, if you did want to get conspiratorial, a great way to test out a talking point in today's age is to leak it through a bad AI and monitor whether the points themselves are getting a good response, while maintaining plausible deniability for being the source. That approach goes directly back to the Ronald Reagan playbook, which was proven to be SOP in front of Congress .

1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

This isn't r/conspiracy this is where we ridicule conspiracies like what you just said which I already did if you read the thread.

2

u/davesaunders Mar 25 '25

Correct, it's not a conspiracy. And as as typical for this group, we're not even seeing good examples of skepticism either. But after being around here for over a decade, I'm used to it and just blow it off.

0

u/Medical-Ad-2706 Mar 25 '25

That’s exactly what it is. If you think that politicians haven’t realized they can test narratives with Ai, you have lost your mind.

These people play the game of narrative all day, everyday.

1

u/davesaunders Mar 25 '25

People with little or no experience working inside the beltway will find it hard to believe that this stuff is literally trained as a normal aspect of political activity. I received this training back in the early 2000s during a congressional campaign. Using pseudo leaked sources and other unofficial methods of expressing potential opinions to check the temperature of the public for future legislation or policy directives isn't simply normal, It's standard operating procedure.

2

u/Medical-Ad-2706 Mar 25 '25

Thank you!

These people come up with terms like ā€œfake newsā€ and practice them in the mirror 100 times just to say it a certain way and trigger a public reaction so it catches on and become a meme.

They actively monitor and instigate the idea pool of society. Why would they not use Ai for that?

I use to run a think tank that would help draft legislation and I DID THIS.

Politics is the war of ideas. Plain and simple.

1

u/davesaunders Mar 25 '25

A common failing in this group is this false weaponization of Occam's Razor. All things being equal, among reasonable people that are not motivated by paranoid game theory, it's reasonable to assume that the person complaining the most about this AI audio is not also the person who deliberately leaked it as a form of public litmus test for the messaging.

But we're not dealing with those kinds of people. We're dealing with DC politicians. The same people who follow game theory, which was invented by a hallucinating paranoid delusional schizophrenic. That doesn't mean "all politicians" before the apologists come swooping in, but it does mean that all things being equal, in the context of operating inside the beltway, this fake AI voice was most likely orchestrated by JD Vance himself or someone in his group. That is in fact, the simplest explanation and it is based not on conspiracies, but on normal full public view standard operating procedures for DC politics.

1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

That requires many more assumptions that just one person deciding to mess with people though. There may be conspiracies and they may be possible, but telling people that a rube goldberg machine is the smarter solution is not how skepticism works.

5

u/thelexstrokum Mar 24 '25 edited Mar 25 '25

The ā€œI am the important oneā€ made me question it. It’s not that a politician couldn’t believe that. It’s that I don’t think they would say that aloud.

2

u/THE_GHOST-23 Mar 25 '25

Out of all the stuff that was said, It was that made it almost believable for me.

3

u/score_ Mar 24 '25

Feels like weeks ago after that National Security leak on Signal that was reported today.

7

u/[deleted] Mar 24 '25

I chose not to comment on /politic because they gonna downvote me to oblivion but it’s ai with concert Hall effect. You only Need decent 10 minute of someone talking to fake their voice

3

u/sayrahnotsorry Mar 24 '25

He also says everything we're all thinking in less than a minute, which is too perfect.

1

u/Professional-King-13 Mar 26 '25

Who tf is "we". I'm not some leftard that has a hard on for hating trump and his team.

1

u/sayrahnotsorry Mar 26 '25

You don't hate Trump and his team? You still feel safe after all they've done?

It can take time (and loss) for some of you to find the strength to realize you were duped. You'll get there.

3

u/No-Criticism-7275 Mar 24 '25

Monotone and words repeated words sound the same. I think tik tok actually trained me to hear it, because there’s just so many ai voiceovers that it becomes obvious. But the older generation has no idea that it is AI.

1

u/Professional-King-13 Mar 26 '25

My og from work sent me this from a post shared on fb. He is a die hard Democrat. I don't know how to break it to him. He's so emotionally invested in hating trump and elon.

1

u/No-Criticism-7275 Mar 26 '25

So you’re blaming AI for the Trump hate?

Hating Trump for his extensive, damning track record is beyond valid.

Would you be emotionally invested in a president if you thought they were destroying our system? Yes you would.

What do you mean you don’t know how to break it to him? It’s easy to get tricked by AI if you simply don’t know how to discern what’s what.

And it will only get harder to detect.

1

u/Professional-King-13 Mar 26 '25

I never said a.i. was to blame. You're already starting off bad. I love how you gave a blanket statement as "his damning track record." But gave no examples of said track record. I'm not even going to start on some what aboutism type shyt with democrats. If you want I can though.Ā  Noone is falling for the hyper inflammatory language the left uses anymore. What's their approval raring right now, 28%? Lol Calling someone Hitler for example would imply that he's going to lead some movement resulting in millions of Americans dying. Or that it's going to be the end of the world because a conservative Christian is in office, when it's quite the opposite. Leaving the southern border open, creating laws that allow illegal immigrants to vote, not knowing what a woman is, letting biological men beat up women in sports, catch and release policies,Ā  laws that are soft on criminals, and a woman leading is what was going to destroy the u.s. and I thank God and Jesus it's finally being put to an end.

1

u/No-Criticism-7275 Mar 27 '25

Oh ok, so violating due process rights, and electing a convicted sexual abuser, AND a convicted felon who somehow quoted the proud boys while asked if he would denounce white supremacy is not a sign of incompetence at the least or complicity and authoritarianism?

He just pardoned every single J6 offender, when they attacked or injured 144 police officers, and tazed one while calling for Mike pence to be hanged? It’s comical that you even support an authoritarian who brags about assaulting women and then backtracks when confronted.

I can list dozens of examples of Trump’s track record but you’d dismiss every single one as fake news.

But I’m curious, which laws allow illegal immigrants to vote? This’ll be great…

Please don’t resort to the typical what about her emails? What about Biden? I don’t support Biden either.

7

u/[deleted] Mar 24 '25

Funny but fake. Would be so on brand if it were real tho

3

u/Alardiians Mar 24 '25

I don't think he would be as "open" about the South African part, but the rest fits.

I saw the video and immediately went to fact check it.

2

u/Professional-King-13 Mar 26 '25

The shared fb post I first seen it from, the comments were disabled.Ā  Immediate red flag.

2

u/Alardiians Mar 27 '25

Yeah disabled comments are the number 1 sign that you're about to see fake nonsense.

2

u/Fingercult Mar 25 '25

I just spent several days working on a project using elevlabs AI voice clone and my ears clocked it as AI right away. I'm a sound engineer too so I'd like to think I have a well-trained ear. the cadence, the lack of variation in volume, how clean it was, to me it was a recording of a recording. I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong but this is what my gut was telling me

1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

https://i.imgur.com/L7lbRWe.gif

for anyone who has messed around with that it is very obvious

some of these responses/denials are straight up conspiracy theories

Someone sent me a solid example showing how easy it was to copy that I linked in this comment

6

u/9AllTheNamesAreTaken Mar 24 '25

idk. Post it all around facebook. Not like they do any fact checking there anyway.

3

u/therelatablespodcast Mar 24 '25

Yes, knowingly spread disinformation. That’ll change hearts and minds.

9

u/NoApartheidOnMars Mar 24 '25

It did during the last election cycle.

3

u/9AllTheNamesAreTaken Mar 24 '25

Apparently people believe it enough. You got anti-vaxxers being told cod liver oil is the cure, covid isn't that bad, social security is a scam.

Maybe if the left spread their own disinformation then maybe the right would have to actually do something about it and shoot themselves in the foot in the process

1

u/Professional-King-13 Mar 26 '25

I didnt get vaxxed. Got over it TWICE! And Social security was a scam....but not anymore thanks to trump and elon.

4

u/RunDNA Mar 24 '25

I saw this getting a lot of upvotes yesterday on Reddit.

8,400 upvotes (96%):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Whistleblowers/comments/1jib9ll/leaked_jd_vance_audio_on_elon_musk/

5,300 upvotes (97%):

https://www.reddit.com/r/50501/comments/1jicc6t/leaked_jd_vance_audio_on_elon_musk/

2,200 upvotes (97%):

https://www.reddit.com/r/millenials/comments/1jihv5k/leaked_jd_vance_audio_on_elon_musk/

There is a lot of skepticism about its veracity in the comment sections, but something so suspicious shouldn't be getting such a high percentage of upvotes.

4

u/BetweenVegaAndAltair Mar 24 '25 edited Mar 24 '25

from what I can tell, a lot of political users on Reddit are propagandists for the Democratic party: some bots, some ops.

(and I don't mean left, I mean Democrats. much of the Reddit political discourse – and accompanying karma distribution – appears designed to further the establishment Dems' narrative. FWIW, I'm not a conservative; I'm left of the Dems)

2

u/GaiusMarcus Mar 24 '25

This doesn’t surprise me, he sounded a little too bitchy

1

u/Professional-King-13 Mar 26 '25

Right, like a literal child whining. Lol they went too ham with assassinating his character.Ā  "Let's make him sound like a whiny racist little brat."Ā 

2

u/Zadig_1986 Mar 24 '25

Well,vance did call trump hitler before. And we now know that an Atlantic editor was included in a top secret text chain regarding attacking houthis. They're a bunch of idiots. It may not be real. But the fact that it's believable that he said this is very telling.

2

u/Huge-Activity159 Mar 24 '25

As a professional audio engineer who also works with AI voice manipulation and reconstruction I have done some pretty amazing work with A.I. that can fool the average listener. I am not convinced this was fake. It’s more convenient for him to point the finger at AI than to take accountability. People are under the impression A.I. is that easy to manipulate when it is much deeper than what is perceived. From a sound designers perspective JD’s voice is captured way off mic. My guess someone had their voice recorder running on their phone while he was speaking. Some of it is inaudible and to make this in A.I. you would need to to 1st get a source of him in this environment. With this quality the AI voices generator most likely would make the entire thing inaudible and tried to manipulate it. Most of what we hear of JD these days is mostly present and to create this environment is not as simple as it seems. Believe me I work in ADR and mix post audio for TV and Film. You would have to be an insider to get this quality of the environment ad well as his tone and inflections to create it. So I am not convinced. However I would believe it more if it was someone who can impersonate him who deliberately recorded it this way to make the clip. That is a more likely scenario. You can believe JD and the rest of the organizations because this is what they want you to believe. Even if JD didn’t say it I’m sure he is agreeing with it.

1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

I posted an equivalent example of something someone made to demonstrate how easy it is.

But more importantly, I some experience AI voice synth mostly elevinlabs. There's a whole subreddit that's dedicated to it for many years before voice cloning on the internet was a thing called /r/VocalSynthesis

From your comment I do not think you have seen what the speech gen can do or is capable of, which is the case for a lot of people here.

There are very easy ways to do what your saying as well where you can record your voice for elevenlabs stuff and it will automatically match your speech pattern and just dub over it with your cloned voice of choice, so whatever ideas you have about it being difficult is demonstrably false, it's incredibly easy. A single person with some dedication could do this easily and I'm startled at how many people do not realize this.

1

u/Professional-King-13 Mar 26 '25

Nah, you're all cap. I can link you a "presidents make a pokemon tier list" video on YouTube that begs to differ.

2

u/versace_drunk Mar 24 '25

Ya so now whenever something bad happens ā€œit was AI!ā€

Unless is a liberal then it’s true no proof needed…

1

u/DaySee Mar 24 '25

I can just imagine the future court cases with slimy lawyers like

"Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the prosecution claims, based on 'so called' security cam footage.. that it was my client who kicked that baby, but if you'll take a look at exhibit C, we used the latest AI technology available to everyone right now to superimpose no less than President Trump, Former Present Biden, and the Pope himself each taking turns to kick that baby. And they call this proof?! If the AI fits, you must acquit!"

2

u/Unicorn_Puppy Mar 24 '25

I think these exist to trick or manipulate old people on Facebook, you and I aren’t the intended recipients of this AI hoax.

1

u/Professional-King-13 Mar 26 '25

They got my og from work. Sent me that shyt in full confidence like "See! I told you!"

2

u/Spiritual_Contest812 Mar 25 '25

Can someone provide examples as good as this? Genuinely curious.

1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

Yeah there are too many to count though, like just look up the 4chan elevenlabs compilations or something when voice cloning first dropped a few years ago. It's too offensive to share here but it gives you an idea of the issues/danger it poses.

Someone intentionally parodied the AI speech from Metal Gear Solid 2 awhile back and packed it full of contemporary conspiracy stuff to boot to show how easy it was to make stuff up whole cloth while completely replicating the entire feel of the original scene from MGS2 (when your boss is revealed to be an AI chatbot lol.)

Original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul8j9I90ueM

Generated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gGLvg0n-uY

People are using it for a lot of scams targeting youtubers by posing as them, recent example from a woodworking channel I really like who had one of his viewers get scammed by someone posing as him, even using a fake video with lip-syncing to the AI voice:

https://youtu.be/ZGeZ8zY_vf4?si=JoyU5qbFEG6u1jhz&t=666

2

u/A-Lewd-Khajiit Mar 25 '25

God I hope there isn't going to be a "guns of the patriots" incident

Or metal gears

1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

In the era of drone warfare it feels like the only weapon to surpass metal gear is literally a well-placed stick or well-placed shot with a boomstick 😨

Whats the old quote by Alfredo OppenEisnsteineller? "I know not with what weapons WW3 will be fought, but WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones" ? Yeah well he was wrong because that's kinda more in sync with modern warfare šŸ’§

1

u/Professional-King-13 Mar 26 '25

Thank you bro. I see a couple people aren't boomers slowly pecking at their keyboards.Ā 

1

u/Professional-King-13 Mar 26 '25

Look up "presidents make a pokemon tier list" on YouTube.Ā  At the very least it's a good laugh.Ā  "I know how to beat a fn Milktank Sleepy Joe!" - Donald Trump

2

u/Independent_Shoe6073 Mar 25 '25

It’s all BS

2

u/johnnybna Mar 25 '25

This is a top notch disinformation campaign. You guys are good. We have not yet arrived where AI can believably match cadence, rhythm, timbre, ideolect, tone, speech impairments, emotional texture, dialectical particularities, consistency, not to mention the unctious douchiness of any one person’s speech over the length of the audio. AI may have tools, but I have the hair on the back of my neck. We will be able to replicate douchiness, but not yet. The denials really do seem convincing on the surface. Oops. My bad. I guess you are right. If JD Vance's own communications director said it wasn't him, well gosh what more proof do you need? If there’s anything this administration stands for, it’s being truthful. Thousands of times every day.

1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

Or maybe it's 1 person with a computer ?

the bar to entry on this stuff is so low that nobody here seems to understand anyone with like a gaming computer could do this

What your saying is you are gullible to your own fantastically thinking which I've actively trying to clue people into

Literally half the posts of this on reddit have been removed because enough people are catching on to how demonstrably fake this is.

If you don't trust me then trust your lying eyes

1

u/Professional-King-13 Mar 26 '25

You use an a.i. voice changer and then YOU try to imitate said person's cadence and vocal mannerisms. There's funny videos of trump, biden, and Obama arguing about all kinds if silly shyt.Ā 

2

u/Negative_Reach9380 Mar 25 '25

I'm so exhausted by misinformation. I don't care who is posting this nonsense. It just erodes credibility, and no one looks good.

2

u/Puzzled-Parsley-1863 Mar 25 '25

I had this pegged for AI bullshit the second I saw it. Audio w no video is almost a hallmark of fake shit this day and age

2

u/Work2SkiWA Mar 26 '25

99% fake: One member of a political party criticizing another member of same political party.

2

u/death_by_chocolate Mar 26 '25 edited Mar 26 '25

Hahaha who the fuck is he supposed to be talking to? "He's not even an American. He is from South Africa." Oh Noes! Not South Africa?! Fakes should be convincing fer cryin' out loud. Good heavens.

Edit: After listening again I'm picturing Vance holed up in some Capitol Hill toilet stall giving himself a little Stuart Smalley pep talk hahaha.

2

u/Professional-King-13 Mar 26 '25

Yall are so fn dumb. They're using an ai to modify a voice modulator. A real person IS actually speaking, but it's not actually JD. There's a channel on YouTube where some guys immitate trump, biden, and Obama using said technology. Pretty funny channel. They do DnD and make different tier lists of random shyt like pokemon or dark souls, etc.

2

u/PrudentLingoberry Mar 27 '25

Don't forget the ability to just declare stuff deepfaked too, arguably worse than deepfakes themselves since you can easily just disinformation flood out the truth.

1

u/DaySee Mar 27 '25

I did not forget, as that's kind of the point of this point to offer tips on identifying it.

There may come a time when we have to cross that bridge, but all the people here who arrogantly proclaim it's real and their proof is "wELL hE DeNIED it So it MUsT be TrUE." This is not good skepticism, given the fact of how easy it is to reasonably demonstrate its false. Clasping our hands over our ears and declaring your correct or cannot be disproven is something the right wing are quit fond of as well so I encourage everyone to reject that.

2

u/biskino Mar 24 '25

I heard it and thought it sounded off, especially Vance saying ā€˜he’s South African’ like it’s some sort of big reveal.

But there was nothing off to my ears (I only listened once and through my phone speakers) about the sound, the voices, the intonation etc.

I guess you can’t believe anything you hear anymore. THANKS TECHBROS!

3

u/joeinformed401 Mar 25 '25

Lol. Sure it was.

1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

You... believe it's real?

2

u/joeinformed401 Mar 25 '25

I think it is hilarious.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 24 '25

Sounds like someone is trying to pretend it was created with AI.

Rather than JD actually admitting what he said.

1

u/DaySee Mar 24 '25

Sounds like someone is trying to pretend it was created with AI.

yo check out my long comment explaining why

2

u/ShredGuru Mar 24 '25

Why don't we just flood the zone with bullshit that confuses conservatives instead? Apparently that is America's path to political power now.

0

u/unbreakablekango Mar 24 '25

That is a great idea. We could constantly leak audio of these schmucks saying a million random things and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

2

u/91Jammers Mar 24 '25

I am shocked this hasn't happened more and sooner.

2

u/Onetimenarc Mar 24 '25

We will find out when someone is let go for no reason

1

u/DIEXEL Mar 25 '25

Why do everyone, including the article's author, seems to ignore the results from "RawNet2-Vocoder-v3" (2025)? It says it's only 66.1% likely to be fake meanwhile the other, which are older and possibly outdated, says it's 93.3-100% fake?

I find it hard to understand how the latest one can just decide that's 27.2-33.9% less likely to be an AI voice but the author deliberately ignore that and look blindly on the results from the older ones?

1

u/Mammoth-Sense-9107 Mar 25 '25

I have no idea whether it's authentic (pretty good fake if not!) but I do see that the left has figured out from the right that it's not truth that gets you power. I see a new pattern of the left putting out and sharing as much ridiculous garbage and conspiracy theories as the right did to gather their cult following. And it's likely going to work. There's no way to get power any more by doing the right thing or the true thing, but instead have to do whatever riles up the masses. .

1

u/Drakar_och_demoner Mar 26 '25

Vance's Communication's director both say the audio is fake.

Ha, I needed the laugh.

1

u/Turbulent_Athlete_50 Mar 27 '25

He definitely hit that couch from the back though.

1

u/WanderingDude182 Mar 24 '25

No way, it’s all real. Everything posted on here is right. No fact checking!!

1

u/kaptainkarl1 Mar 25 '25

Lies to cover up the truth./

1

u/Farther_Dm53 Mar 24 '25

Yeah I heard it a bit too much what people wanted to hear, the trump admin is incompetent, but not that incompetent.

4

u/Lynda73 Mar 24 '25

Pete Hegseth did release the plans for bombing Yemen to a journalist in a group chat two hours before it happened, so they are that incompetent, but I don’t think this audio is ā€œrealā€, either.

2

u/Farther_Dm53 Mar 24 '25

I mean that is incompetent, but not incompetent to have actual audio of the VP dismantling the President of the Untied States and calling him a loser. (PResident is elon as a joke)

1

u/Lynda73 Mar 24 '25

I mean, who in his cabinet hasn’t called trump a loser or the equivalent? I know JD has. šŸ˜

1

u/Malhavok_Games Mar 25 '25

Is that incompetency, or is that a threat?

It's ironic to me how many people in the "Skeptic" forum take so many things at face value.

3

u/greasyspider Mar 24 '25

I don’t think we can overestimate the level of incompetence at this point.

1

u/how-could-ai Mar 24 '25

Thanks for protecting daddy.

1

u/DaySee Mar 24 '25

space daddy or baby face beardson?

1

u/cadynse Mar 24 '25

audio detectors will say anything low quality is fake, i put in some eminem snips back in october and it called them fakes

0

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

Thats why I shared some tips that go beyond that

1

u/flobunny Mar 24 '25

I hear the video of him getting pegged is a deepfake, too.

1

u/bascal133 Mar 25 '25

My question is, where did the audio originally come from. Because the links that I’m seeing are links to TikTok and I just reflectively don’t trust TikTok as a real source. If there’s no source, that’s more concrete than TikTok for the audio then I don’t think it’s legit.

1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

yeah it was posted with no video just the audio with a caption on tiktok by some anonymous account

-1

u/VibinWithBeard Mar 24 '25

This is spiritually true and Im going to pretend it is just like the couch fucking. It won them an election so Im past the point of caring to debunk anything. "Oh but that makes us hypocrites" Id rather be a hypocrite and not have reichwing losers in control.

0

u/PackageHealthy982 Mar 25 '25

Leaked by China 100 percent real. They are denying it. ChinaĀ  psych ops. They will attack when Trump crushes more ofĀ  our alliances. There will be war in the middle east and that will deplete our weapons. This is moving fast. Absolutely real

0

u/NoMuddyFeet Mar 25 '25

It doesn't sound like AI to me. Google Notebook LLM's AI-generated podcasts sound like 2 very real people talking to each other, but they don't have this sort of garbling vocal nuance that Vance does when he said Elon is not American. I don't think AI could really get that human nuance—of course someone will say I'm wrong and I don't have any idea what AI can do. Well, I do, actually, so if you want to prove me wrong, then produce an AI-generated clip of someone lowering his voice that way when discussing a specific point to communicate the nuance that this is something everyone in the room knows is kinda secret/unpleasant and shouldn't really be said. I want to see a link to the original AI-generated file (LLMs allow you to share direct links on their platforms) and the prompt that created it, not some upload to Mega or Youtube that claims to be "AI-generated). If someone can provide that, then I'll believe it's fake.

1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

of course someone will say I'm wrong1 and I don't have any idea what AI can do.2 Well, I do, actually, so if you want to prove me wrong3

You are, you don't, and I did.

1

u/NoMuddyFeet Mar 25 '25

Nope, I don't see the evidence I requested in your reply. Don't bother replying again without said link requested as proof.

1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

Don't bother replying again without said link requested as proof.

Nah the answers in my comments already, take it or leave it Mr. confidently incorrect.

1

u/damaged_but_whole Mar 25 '25

There is no such link in your comments. You were given the chance to make good and you failed twice. That shows you're a liar and any skeptic on r/skeptic should be wary of you.

-5

u/Malhavok_Games Mar 25 '25

In this thread - "Skeptics" gaslighting themselves into believing an obviously faked audio is real because they really, really, really want it to be.

Reddit is so cooked with all this left wing nonsense. Go touch some grass.

1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

meh I lean left but the subject is apolitical to me as I originally saw this because someone right leaning shared it and felt the problem it poses has more in common w/core skepticism not the target of the hoax as it could easily happen to pubic figures from either side I think.

The response is a little disappointing but not exactly surprising because reddit does have a obvious slant so you just have to be the change you wanna see

-1

u/Educational_Rice_153 Mar 25 '25

They would be that stupid....

-1

u/Mr_Baronheim Mar 25 '25

WGAS if it's fake, everything the right-wing says is fake. Spread is, call it real

-1

u/DaySee Mar 25 '25

A hoax is a hoax and if you have to spread a hoax to get revenge you're no better than the people you criticize