People using crosswalks in Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Redwood City got a laugh when they pressed the crossing button and heard messages from impersonators of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
Some pedestrians heard a fake Musk talking about President Trump. “You know, it’s funny, I used to think he was just this dumb sack of s*&#. But when you get to know him, he’s actually a really sweet and tender and loving.” In the background a Trump impersonator says, “Sweetie, come back to bed.”
TikTok users began to post videos of the talking crosswalks just before midnight Friday.
“Hi, this is Mark Zuckerberg, but real ones call me the Zuck,” the message began. “You know, it’s normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcefully insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience. And I just want to assure you that you don’t need to worry because there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. See ya.”
The crosswalks speakers are programmed to give street names, but many of them were hacked on Friday to play the humorous messages. By Saturday, the audio feature had been disabled.
Some pedestrians on University Avenue heard Musk touting Tesla’s Cybertruck.
“Hello. This is Elon Musk. Welcome to Palo Alto, the home of Tesla engineering. You know they say money can’t buy happiness and OK, I guess that’s true. God knows I’ve tried. But it can buy a Cybertruck and that’s pretty sick, right? Right? F&$#, I’m so loaded.”
Both billionaires have ties to Palo Alto. Zuckerberg is CEO of Meta, headquartered in Menlo Park. One of Zuckerberg’s homes is in the Crescent Park neighborhood and Musk once lived at 385 Forest Ave. in downtown Palo Alto (above the Daily Post’s offices) during his PayPal days. Musk’s Tesla was headquartered in Palo Alto for several years and still has an engineering outpost here.
On Reddit, users reacted to the prank.
“Whether it’s Zuckerberg or not, we all know it’s what’s happening and it’s f$#@ing scary. AI will be our downfall,” wrote CloseToTheSun10.
“Look both ways before you reprogram,” said Deep-Room6932.
“Zuck has a history of hacking and taunting,” wrote Lost_Satyr.
And, of course, one Reddit user wrote, “No I texted Mark and he told me this is him and it’s legit.”
Zuck and Musk are both the lauchingstocks of Palo Alto, so this is entirely appropriate.
These crosswalks are a hazard to pedestrians. Imagine laughing so hard that you walk out into traffic and are hit by a self-driving Waymo!
Musk and Zuck are Palo Alto’s greeters, like those Greeters at Walmart who hand you a shopping cart and wish you a good day.
hii!
just wanted to clear up some misinfo
the extra messages play after the push-confirm sound (WAIT!) and do not interfere with
any existing accessibility or safety related messages
this can be seen in the various videos posted on social media
love u xoxo
<3 annemarie
We are Anonymous. We are Legion. There will be more to come.
It’s all true.
– Elon Musk
It was me. Lol.
Signed,
Jeff Bezos
MEAN 🙁
As the dude responsible for this hack, my only regret is going too easy on Elon.
I believe you
From a couple of the videos, I think the end of the Musk one was supposed to be “f***, I’m so lonely.”
It was me
I’ll do it again
Hi everyone, I’m glad you good a good laugh from my crosswalk hack. FYI you can find the manuals online and these things have a default password of 1234.
If it’s this easy to hack into the city’s crosswalk software, it must also be easy to hack into the city’s police records and SAP financial system. This incident is an advertisement to those who extort cities with Ransomware. Hopefully the city is backing everything up off-site. Pay attention City Council.
You raise a valid concern—cybersecurity needs to be taken seriously at every level of city infrastructure. However, it’s important not to assume all systems are equally vulnerable just because one was compromised. Critical systems like police records and financial data typically have much more robust protections in place, including encryption, multi-layered security, and off-site backups. That said, this incident should be a wake-up call for the city to assess all digital vulnerabilities, not just the ones that made headlines. Accountability and transparency from City Council will be key moving forward.
I was in front of the Apple store on Friday trying to pair new headphones and a bunch of different sketchy devices came up spelling out “always use good password hygeine” or something like that. I assumed somebody messed with the demo phones in the store. Can’t remember if it was before or after the buttons started going off but it was right before dark.
They should be reprogrammed to say “who farted”
Now it would really be bad if the recording said, “Sure, the light is red, but walk out into the street anyway. You won’t get hurt. Go ahead.”