Netizens name Elon Musk’s viral Chinese doppelgänger ‘Yi Long Musk’

December 16, 2021

A man has gone viral on social media for his uncanny resemblance to Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Is this for real: A video of the man, dubbed “Yi Long Musk” by some netizens, was first shared on Douyin, the Chinese TikTok app, before making its way to several other social media platforms, according to Indy100.

The 13-second clip starts with the lookalike, who remains unidentified, standing beside a black sedan inside what appears to be a parking lot. At a glimpse, the man looks somewhat similar to Musk, 50, but when he smiles, the resemblance becomes uncanny.
The man looks so identical to Time’s 2021 Person of the Year that some Facebook users could not help but be skeptical and called the video a deepfake.

Deepfake technology allows users to superimpose the face of anyone they want onto another person’s body in a video format – think Photoshop but for videos of moving people. California passed a law in 2019 that “prohibits the use of deepfakes to influence political campaigns,” as Davis Wright Tremaine reported.
It is still unclear whether the video is legit or just a product of digital manipulation, as the identity of the man in front of the camera remains unknown.

The real Elon Musk: Time Magazine recently named Musk their Person of the Year, an annual title the publication has given out since 1927 to the person the magazine’s editors believe was the most influential person in the news and people’s lives that year, whether for “good or ill.”.

“I admire anyone who is making a positive contribution to humanity, whether that is in entertainment or technology,” Musk told Time. “I think anyone who is doing things that are really useful for the rest of humanity, I admire them greatly.”

Featured Image via @kcho.how

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