Pedestrian signals hacked in California with the voices of Musk and Zuckerberg.

In a funny and astonishing incident, pedestrian crossing signals in three cities in the American state of California were hacked this week, starting to emit AI-generated voice messages imitating Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, and Meta's founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Videos circulating on social media captured moments of surprise and laughter among passersby as they heard unexpected messages upon pressing the pedestrian crossing button, which is a voice feature designed to assist visually impaired individuals in safe navigation. In Palo Alto, officials confirmed that 12 intersections in the city were affected by this breach, as reported by "The Verge" citing "Palo Alto Online." The city's teams quickly disabled the audio system temporarily at those locations while keeping the signals functioning normally, pending the resolution of the technical loophole believed to have occurred last Friday. The situation was not limited to Palo Alto, as the cities of Redwood and Menlo Park also experienced similar cases. An official investigation was opened in Redwood, while local authorities worked to identify the source of the breach and fix the malfunctions. The messages broadcasted were entirely unconventional; one recording attributed to Elon Musk's voice said: "Hello, I'm Elon. Can we be friends? Will you be my friend? I'll give you a Cybertruck, I promise." Zuckerberg's message had a sarcastic and intriguing tone, stating: "Hello, I'm Mark Zuckerberg, but close friends call me The Zuck... As you know, it's natural to feel discomfort or even violation as we forcibly introduce artificial intelligence into every aspect of your conscious experience... I just want to reassure you that there's no need to worry because there's nothing you can do to stop it... Anyway, goodbye." These satirical messages, while still accompanied by basic safety instructions, sparked a wide debate on the ease of breaching public infrastructure and using it to broadcast unauthorized messages, albeit appearing lighthearted on the surface. Behind the humor lie genuine concerns about the security of smart systems proliferating in our streets and cities day by day.