When I first saw a post about this on social media, I wondered whether it was real, because somebody could easily have produced a fake video. Then I saw that Rachel Maddow over at MSNBC said it’s true, and we trust her to report accurate information, don’t we? Well, actually no, but other outlets have confirmed it’s happening so here we go:
To wit, some wiseguy (or girl) has apparently hacked into crosswalk signals in cities like Seattle and Palo Alto and given them the voices of prominent folks in Big Tech—namely Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Instead of some weird computer voice telling you what to do, you can listen to (a presumably AI) Zuck give you his thoughts about artificial intelligence:
Somebody hacked in a dozen of crosswalks of Bay area by inserting voice of Zuck and Elon…
That’s bay area for you 😄🤣 pic.twitter.com/dijF9fsHTG
— Mr B (@maddyb65) April 14, 2025
There’s nothing you can do, “Zuck” warned:
“Hi, this is Mark Zuckerberg, but real ones call me ‘The Zuck.’ It’s normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcefully insert AI into every … facet of your conscious experience,” the voice said. “And I just want to assure you, you don’t need to worry because there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. Anyways, see ya.”
Musk meanwhile, just wants to be this girl’s friend:
The crosswalk hack… pic.twitter.com/nniaHPYbTG
— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) April 14, 2025
In Seattle, however, the authorities don’t think it’s funny:
The Seattle Department of Transportation is responding to hacked crosswalk push buttons in several locations which have been altered to play fake audio messages. We have corrected walk signal messages in multiple locations and continue to respond to tampered push buttons as we learn of them.
The audio recordings at crosswalks play a critical role for people who are blind or have limited vision, helping them to cross streets safely. We are concerned that someone would disregard the safety of people to make a political statement.
They have a point, but the prank is pretty original, I gotta admit. I mean who doesn’t want to hear Jeff Bezos warn about taxes on the rich while they’re waiting for the light to change?
Someone hacked the crosswalks in the U District
“Hi I’m Jeff Bezos and this crosswalk is sponsored by Amazon Prime…” pic.twitter.com/71pPBZoEWV— xsited (@xsited) April 17, 2025
“Hi, I’m Jeff Bezos, this crosswalk is sponsored by Amazon Prime with an important message,” the message said. “Please don’t tax the rich. Otherwise, all the other billionaires will move to Florida, too.”
Who did this—and why—are questions that remain unanswered.
Another question to think about: Do those buttons actually do anything? When I’m at a crosswalk with my wife, and she keeps pressing it, I like to annoy her by saying, “You know there’s nothing in there, right? It’s empty—the button is just there to make you feel better. You will wait for the light to change for the exact same amount of time regardless of whether or not you push it.”
She usually gives me the side eye and tells me I’m full of it—but what if I’m right? Food for thought.
It reminds me of another situation where a friend wondered whether there was just one big tank under the gas station and it fed the same fuel to both the premium and regular-grade hoses. “Don’t be preposterous!” I said. “They would never do such a thing.”
Then, a few years later, I read about a station that got busted for doing exactly that.
Just saying.
I’ll leave you with one more (warning: profanity at the end):
Someone hacked crosswalks in California and replaced them with the voices of @elonmusk and @finkd 😂 pic.twitter.com/WUl4hJapDK
— Natalie F Danelishen (@Chesschick01) April 14, 2025
