Tech Titans Take Over Crosswalks: AI Prank Leaves Pedestrians Puzzled and Seattle Officials Scrambling
Crosswalk buttons in the US swapped robotic commands for AI-spoofed voices of Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg, thanks to a poorly secured app. Now, instead of “Walk,” you might hear a billionaire’s plea not to tax the rich. It’s all fun until visually impaired pedestrians get confused, and city officials start losing patience.
Hot Take:
When crosswalks start sounding like a billionaire podcast featuring Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg, you know the pranksters are having a field day. Who knew that all it took to make billionaires your personal street-side MCs was a free app and a Bluetooth connection? Maybe next time, the button will just Venmo you a billion dollars instead.
Key Points:
- Crosswalks in several US cities were hacked to play AI-generated voices of billionaires instead of standard instructions.
- Seattle and Silicon Valley were among the cities hit, with messages parodying tech giants and social issues.
- The hack was likely facilitated by a publicly available app from crosswalk manufacturer Polara, now removed from app stores.
- Default passwords (like 1234) allowed easy access to the crosswalk settings.
- Polara and city officials are scrambling to fix the issue and improve security measures.
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