Elon Musk Stated, 'I Am Formally Shopping for McDonald's'?

A rumor claiming tech entrepreneur Elon Musk stated he deliberate to purchase the McDonald’s quick meals restaurant chain circulated broadly on-line in late 2024. Musk purportedly stated, “I’m formally shopping for McDonald’s.”

For instance, on Oct. 15, 2024, an proprietor of the YouTube channel Voyager posted a video titled (archived), “Elon Musk: ‘I’m formally shopping for McDonalds.'” The clip obtained over 273,000 views and displayed a thumbnail picture supposedly exhibiting Musk and McDonald’s workers.

The video’s description learn, “As we speak, we’re diving right into a groundbreaking story that is left the whole world in shock. Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind corporations like Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and Twitter, has simply made an announcement that no person noticed coming: he’s formally shopping for McDonald’s.”

On Oct. 28, a TikTok person shared the identical rumor in a unique video incomes greater than 355,000 views (archived). A Fb person later reposted the same clip.

In a 3rd instance of customers sharing the rumor saying Musk purchased McDonald’s, on Nov. 2, an proprietor of the YouTube channel Elon Musk Rewind posted the identical declare in yet one more video that includes a thumbnail picture totally different from the one shared within the aforementioned YouTube video (archived).

Nevertheless, the rumor claiming Musk stated “I’m formally shopping for McDonald’s” was false. We positioned no information reviews or different credible data confirming something about Musk shopping for McDonald’s. The actual fact-checking web sites Check Your Fact and PolitiFact additionally rated the rumor as false. 

The individuals who created these movies used artificial-intelligence (AI) instruments to generate faux thumbnail photos and audio narration, and to even handle the clip choice and modifying. These customers merely entered a textual content immediate as an order to the generative-AI instruments to make the movies and thumbnail photos.

For additional studying, we beforehand reported about one other video shared by the Voyager YouTube channel that falsely claimed Musk — Tesla’s CEO — introduced the corporate can be releasing a motor house in 2025 priced at lower than $17,000. We additionally published reporting a couple of totally different video shared by the Elon Musk Rewind YouTube channel that falsely claimed Musk purchased Common Motors.

Musk Joked About McDonald’s Ice Cream Machine Failures

Whereas there was no reality to the rumor about Musk shopping for McDonald’s, Verify Your Reality famous he did a minimum of as soon as reference the quick meals restaurant chain on Twitter in April 2022 — shortly after signaling his curiosity in purchasing that social media platform and previous to the location’s name change to X.

On April 27, 2022, Musk shared a faux tweet screenshot purportedly exhibiting a publish on his account, studying, “Now I’ll purchase McDonald’s and repair the entire ice cream machines.” The faux tweet referenced how the quick meals chain’s ice cream machines purportedly skilled a series of issues through the years — a matter supposedly particularly distinctive solely to McDonald’s.

Musk joked in his textual content above the picture of the faux post (archived), “Pay attention, I can not do miracles okay.”

Separate Satirical Rumor About Musk Shopping for McDonald’s

In our analysis, we additionally famous an identical however nonetheless totally different rumor printed on SpaceXMania.com — a web site labeling its entertainment-oriented content material as parody and satire.

On Might 18, 2023 — a couple of 12 months after Musk tweeted the above message — SpaceXMania.com printed an article (archived) titled, “Simply in: Elon Musk Teases Potential McDonald’s Acquisition To ‘Repair Their Ice Cream Machines.'” The story and web site featured quite a few labels noting the article’s satirical nature.

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