Elon Musk wants to meet his 'Chinese doppelgänger' - if he really exists.
Since a video of him went viral several months ago, Chinese man Ma Yilong has become known online for bearing a striking resemblance to the Space X founder.
The two look so uncannily alike that Ma Yilong has rebranded himself as 'China's Elon Musk', even posting a TikTok video in English to address his Western fans.
However, not everyone is convinced. Some people suspect that Ma Yilong is actually a deepfake - a form of artificial intelligence that projects one face onto another.
Now, Elon Musk himself joined the debate, saying that he's skeptical whether his Chinese doppelgänger actually exists - but that if he does, he'd love to meet him in the flesh.
"I’d like to meet this guy (if he is real). Hard to tell with deepfakes these days," the Tesla boss tweeted last week, alongside a screenshot of a side-by-side picture of him and his lookalike.
Because deepfakes mold themselves to the original face and shift with their facial expressions and movement, they can be eerily realistic. Whether Musk believes Ma Yilong looks like him or not, we know that he's been aware of his existence for quite some time.
Back in December 2021, Must jokingly replied to side by side pictures of himself and his doppelgänger, speculating that he might be "partly Chinese."
"Maybe I’m partly Chinese!" he tweeted at the time.
While Musk's quest to find his lookalike might look fairly achievable, the billionaire is having less luck in his other pursuits.
This week, he announced that his bid to buy Twitter for an eyewatering $44 billion is currently "on hold".
In a tweet, the Tesla CEO told his followers: "Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users".
He then attached a link to the Reuters article, titled: "Twitter estimates spam, fake accounts comprise less than 5% of users -filing".
Musk has repeatedly stated his intention to tackle the number of spam/bot profiles on the social media platform if his purchase of Twitter is successful.
