Elon Musk has already been questioned under oath once this year, Tesla's lawyers are pulling out all the stops to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Lawyers for the electric-vehicle maker argued that Musk shouldn't be interviewed under oath in a lawsuit over the company's claims concerning its self-driving technology because Musk has been the subject of numerous deepfakes.
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The family of Walter Huang wants Tesla held accountable for his 2018 death while using the company's autopilot software. Huang died while driving a Tesla Model X, and the lawsuit claims the car's driver-assist software was at fault.
Musk, of course, has been a big booster of Tesla's autonomous driving technology, and attorneys for Huang's family want to speak to him under oath about self-driving technology.
But Musk's attorneys say that the billionaire cannot recall details about his autonomous-driving claims and that "like many public figures, is the subject of many 'deepfake' videos and audio recording to that purport to show him saying and doing things he never actually said or did," Reuters reported.
However, the judge in the case called the lawyers' gambit "deeply troubling."
"Their position is that because Mr. Musk is famous and might be more of a target for deep fakes, his public statements are immune," Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Evette D. Pennypacker wrote, according to The Verge.
"In other words, Mr. Musk, and others in his position, can simply say whatever they like in the public domain, then hide behind the potential for their recorded statements being a deep fake to avoid taking ownership of what they did actually say and do."
The judge ordered Musk give a limited three-hour deposition about his statements. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday to finalize the deposition with the lawsuit set to go to trial on July 31.
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