STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

AI Audio

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 Communications director both say the audio is fake. The TikTok video where the audio seems to have originated from misspelled Vance's name as "Vence".

The oldest copy of the viral audio appears to be this TikTok video (archived here) uploaded on March 23, 2025 at 17:50:59 GMT by an account named"Joseiitalia" with following description:

#italy #france🇫🇷 #germany #england #germany #worldtok #mexico #canada #elonmusk #vence #fyp #foryourpage #foryoupage #democracy #maga #dump #breakingnews #audio #vicepresident #Jdvence #maga #vicepresident

Here is a transcript of the video made by Lead Stories:

Everything that he's doing is getting criticized in the media and he says that he's helping and he's not. He's making us look bad. He's making me look bad. And I'll tell you this, and he wouldn't like it if I said it. But he's not even an American. He is from South Africa.

And he's just cosplaying as this great American leader in a room that has the portraits of some of the greatest men that ever ran this country and he has the audacity to act like he is an elected official. I am an elected official. I am an important one in this situation, not him. So if he wants to tank the economy and his cars, maybe that's what he deserves.

This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing, including the caption "Leaked J.D. Vence audio on Elon Musk":

(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Mar 24 08:27:47 2025 UTC)

Both the hashtags and the caption in the video misspelled J.D. Vance's name as "Vence".

Analysis with the Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector browser plugin gave the audio an "Authenticity score" of 9/100, indicating it was "likely a deepfake".

(Source: Hiya browser plugin results obtained by Lead Stories on March 24, 2025 at 08:48:01 UTC)

Lead Stories further ran the audio through the DeepFake-O-Meter audio detector. This AI detection tool, hosted by The University of Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab, found the audio most likely AI generated. Its findings, based on several AI detectors, are displayed below:

(Source: Deepfake-O-Meter results obtained by Lead Stories on March 24, 2025 at 10:03:35 UTC)

J.D. Vance's Communications Director Will Martin took to X (archived here) to say the audio was fake, saying:

This audio is 100% fake and most certainly not the Vice President.

Lead Stories reached out to Martin and to the TikTok account owner and we will update this story if we receive more information.