Crosswalk protest art
« previous post | next post »
Last weekend, a number of crosswalk buttons in Silicon Valley were hacked so as to play (faked) messages from Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. This got lots of (social and mass) media coverage — for one useful summary, see Zoe Morgan, "Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuckerberg voices", Palo Alto Online 4/12/2025, or check out various other sources…
Some audio samples:
Today's AI synthesis and voice morphing technology makes it easy to create such clips — and crosswalk buttons are not the only possible medium to be hacked.
And of course there will be targets from other regions of the political and cultural space.
Update — Apparently the same sort of thing happened yesterday in Seattle: "'Please don’t tax the rich': Seattle crosswalk buttons hacked to sound like Jeff Bezos", 4/16/2025. Reddit has a sample video.
Haamu said,
April 16, 2025 @ 12:37 pm
I don't know which aspect I like more: the subversive use of AI against its own creators/promoters, or the succinctness of the illustration that there are some things AI now does brilliantly (vocal impersonation) and some things — based on my experience, anyway — that it doesn't do well at all, and presumably couldn't in this case (the writing of the jokes). Especially the punchline on the final one: human-AI collaboration, perfectly executed.
Ex Tex said,
April 16, 2025 @ 2:16 pm
I don't think I can let the cleverness of hacking a crosswalk button go unrecognized. Thinking of it, then doing it, then using those "voices" — it's all bloody brilliant.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
April 16, 2025 @ 2:27 pm
…unless, of course, one is blind and wishes to cross the street…
Haamu said,
April 16, 2025 @ 7:28 pm
Yes, it has surely been a tough couple of months to be blind, what with cuts or threats to Medicaid, Social Security Disability, VA medical services, medical research programs, FDA services, USAID programs, library funding, diversity initiatives, and other programs and services supporting the visually impaired, but this, this … this is truly the capper.
If you want a linguistic angle, there's an Oxford Comma in there somewhere.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
April 17, 2025 @ 7:04 am
I'm not sure I catch your drift — sabotaging infrastructure designed to assist the disabled is just ducky, so long as the saboteur happens to disagree with government policy that the saboteur also believes might also disadvantage the same class of disabled people? Can I blow up a wheelchair factory because I don't believe the EEOC's enforcement of ADA regulations is stringent enough?
Sorry to be the municipal solicitor in the crowd, but that's not how representative democracy works.
And you're right, there's no linguistics to be found in this thread. /unsubscribe.
Haamu said,
April 17, 2025 @ 9:23 am
"That's not how representative democracy works" describes a lot of things these days, many of them more aptly than it does this. I would have offered "That's not how compliance under autocracy works," which describes a small but increasing number of things. But, you know, /pəˈteɪ.toʊ/ – /pəˈtɑːtəʊ/.
Interestingly, unlike your hypothetical wheelchair factory, the infrastructure in this case was not obliterated. As far as I can tell from recordings 5 and 6, the original audio was not removed: the instruction that it is now safe to proceed still seems to be audible. These dissidents appear to have been unusually conscientious.
But you've introduced another interesting linguistic focus here: the polysemy of sabotage — its uses and misuses.
Jonathan Smith said,
April 17, 2025 @ 8:32 pm
BEO is supposed to be saying "we're not a democracy, we're a republic." Glitch in the matrix I guess. Re: sabotage, indeed: in an arguably more striking instance, what in days gone by was called "co-authoring an op-ed" is now (quoth Marco) "vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, [and] creating a ruckus" with offenders to be summarily ambushed, blackvanned and imprisoned (quoth the masked agents: "We r not monsters. We just do wut govrnment tell us.") So FFS Haaamu whatever kind of name that is please stop sabotaging and creating a ruckus on the hallowed SafeSpaceTM that is LL.
Haamu said,
April 17, 2025 @ 10:17 pm
Fair enough. I regret rising to the bait. My apologies to the proprietors.
"Whatever kind of name that is" is kind of a weird comment (1) in this forum, of all places, and (2) in an age when almost anything can be decoded with a right-click. I'm torn: was that last sentence an insult or a joke?
May this place remain a safe space as long as possible.
JPL said,
April 17, 2025 @ 11:54 pm
Somebody should do one of these so that, when somebody presses the button an excessive number of times, a loud and protesting voice with a heavy New York accent says, "Ow! Awright awready!"
Taylor, Philip said,
April 18, 2025 @ 3:36 pm
Well, Haamu, whilst I would not dream for one second of querying the nature or validity of your name, right-clicking on it offered nothing which might have helped me with its decoding (if decoding is what is required).