Multiple crosswalks in Seattle, Wash. were hacked into yesterday. When waiting for the crosswalk pedestrians were greeted with an AI generated voice message imitating Jeff Bezos voice.
The Seattle Department of Transportation is working to track down and fix crosswalk buttons they say were compromised to make a “political statement,” impersonating an e-commerce billionaire.
The voice said, “Hi. I’m Jeff Bezos. This crosswalk is sponsored by Amazon Prime, with an important message. Ya know? Please, please don’t tax the rich. Otherwise all the other billionaires will move to Florida too. Wouldn’t it be terrible if all the rich people left Seattle — or got Luigi’d — and then the normal people could afford to live here again?”
It’s unclear how the technology was compromised, but Ethan Bergerson, press secretary for SDOT, said, “Audio recordings at crosswalks play a critical role for people who are blind… we are concerned that someone would disregard the safety of people.”
Just days ago a similar hack occurred in California, where somebody compromised a crosswalk to add an audio clip of an impersonator of another tech billionaire, Tesla founder Elon Musk, in Palo Alto. In that crosswalk, the voice can be heard saying, “You know they say money can’t buy happiness, and yeah, OK. I guess that’s true, God knows I’ve tried. But it can buy a Cybertruck, and that’s pretty sick, right? Right?” (expletive) I’m so alone.”
Additionally, a push button in Menlo Park was made to sound like Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. It can be heard saying, “It’s normal to feel uncomfortable, or even violated as we forcefully insert AI into every, every facet of your conscious experience. And I just want to assure you, you don’t need to worry, because there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.”