Did Tesla CEO Elon Musk announce on social media that he would "stop all donations" towards the Olympic Games because it's "a woke event now"? No, that's not true: There are no posts on Musk's social media making or confirming such an announcement. The original article reporting that was written using artificial intelligence according to an online tool that detects such writing. Lead Stories found no actual news articles reporting what would be a major news event if it was real.
The claim appeared in an article (archived here) where it was published on August 1, 2024, under the title "Elon Musk Announces Boycott of Paris Olympics 'I Will Stop All Donations, It's A Woke Event Now.'" It opened:
Elon Musk, the tech mogul and CEO of companies like Tesla and SpaceX, has made headlines once again, this time for his decision to boycott the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Animal News screenshot taken on Mon Aug 5 14:01:27 2024 UTC)
The article, which appeared on a site called "Animal News," claims that Musk announced he would cease all donations and support for the Olympic Games, allegedly posting on social media: "The Olympics have become a woke event now. I will stop all donations and any form of support. This isn't what sports should be about." The article did not link Musk's supposed statement to any posts or other sources to substantiate it.
Running the article through Hive Moderation, an AI-generated content detection website, Lead Stories found that there was a "99.9%" likelihood that the claim was AI-generated. Evidence of this finding is shown below:
(Source: HiveModeration.com screenshot taken on Mon Aug 5 18:10:13 2024 UTC)
A search on Musk's X (archived here) account showed no evidence of the quote on his account. Musk does not have any other social media outside of his X account.
Lead Stories did a search using keywords on the Google News index of thousands of web sites, visible here, which found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim (archived here).
We have contacted Musk and will update this article when we receive a response.
More Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning Elon Musk are here.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims related to the Olympics are here.
