Is "leaked" audio of Elon Musk telling President Donald Trump that "Tesla is going down" authentic? No, that's not true: Five tests included in the University at Buffalo Media Forensic Lab's Deepfake-O-Meter rated probability that the audio file is AI-generated at between 97.8 to 100 percent. The posts promoting the audio as real do not include any supporting evidence.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) shared on X on March 12, 2025, under the title:
So it turns out Musk was audibly sobbing at the Oval Office which may have triggered the bizarre Tesla Whitehouse promo.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X.com screenshot taken on Mon Mar 31 23:03:17 2025 UTC)
Real? https://t.co/JpgszGe7Uy pic.twitter.com/eiwTSwBd0S
-- Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) March 31, 2025
This is a transcription of the audio:
Trump voice: It's okay. It's okay.
Musk voice: It's not okay because Tesla is going down and it's, it's, it's not good.
Trump voice: You're a smart guy. You can do this.
Musk voice: it's, it's bad, it's really bad.
Trump voice: Everything's going to be okay. It's all going to come out in the wash, as they say, soon everybody will be buying again.
Musk voice: I hope so.
Lead Stories turned to the Deepfake-O-Meter, a collection of AI detection tools curated by the University at Buffalo's Media Forensics Lab for analysis of the audio file. Three of the tests concluded there was a 100 percent likelihood the audio was created by artificial intelligence, which a fourth rated it a 98.6 percent probability and a fifth estimated 97.8 percent.
