Did entrepreneur Elon Musk discuss in an interview a theory that holds "every single Disney princess is supposed to... represent a disorder", as shown in a video on TikTok? No, that's not true: As of this publication, there's no evidence that Musk talked about that subject in any recorded interview. Additionally, digital forensics and a deepfake-testing website, which analyzes audio, video, and other media, suggest that artificial intelligence generated the voice purported to be Musk's.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok by muskshood on May 7, 2024. The post's caption says:
The Disney Theory! 😮 #disney #theory #conspiracy #2024 #mystery #conspiracytiktok #conspiracytok
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon June 3 07:55:07 2024 UTC)
In the 1:03 minute clip, Musk appears on screen for a split-second, then the rest of the video is a montage of covering shots of Disney characters, with narration by a male voice that is heard saying, in part:
Now, this is scary. It's sad but not proven that every single Disney princess is supposed to, like, represent a disorder. Psychologists did a study, and they said in every Disney princess, there's a clear disorder that they have...
The narration goes on to say that Belle from "Beauty and the Beast" was meant to represent Stockholm syndrome, that Ariel from "The Little Mermaid" was a hoarder, Alice from the namesake "Alice in Wonderland" exhibited schizophrenia, and sisters Elsa and Anna from "Frozen" depicted bipolar disorder.
The video did not provide evidence to corroborate the above claim or include a link to the supposed study.
Lead Stories contacted the Walt Disney Company for comment and will update this story accordingly.
That said, there is no evidence corroborating the claim that Musk talked about "The Disney Theory" in any interview.
Additionally, digital forensics and deepfake-testing websites, which analyze audio, video and other media, suggest that artificial intelligence generated the voice purported to be Musk's.
Taken From 'Joe Rogan Experience'
Although Musk's image appears in the video for only a second, he is wearing the same black T-shirt bearing a geometric design, using similarly appearing audio headphones, and shown before a similar backdrop of dark curtains as in a clip taken from "The Joe Rogan Experience" and used in another video falsely attributing statements to Musk.
Lead Stories previously debunked that claim -- posted by the same TikTok account: "muskshood".
As we reported on May 23, 2024, Musk has made multiple appearances on Rogan's podcast and was seen in the video on TikTok, Episode #1470 from May 7, 2020 (archived here). During the two-hour show, Rogan's interview with Musk does not mention the Disney princess mental health conspiracy theory.
Google search
Lead Stories did searches using keywords on Google News, visible here (archived here), which found no credible documents or reporting as of June 3, 2024, to corroborate the claim that Musk discussed the Disney princess conspiracy theory in any interview.
Deepfake detection
To assess the clip's authenticity, Lead Stories also ran the TikTok video through the online tool Hive Moderation to check whether the video or its audio was altered or generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The tool on the Hive Moderation website said the video is 99.9 percent "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content":
(Source: Hive Moderation screengrab taken Mon Jun 3 19:16:31 2024 UTC)
Read more
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims involving Elon Musk can be found here.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to deepfakes can be found here.
