AI scammer fakes Rubio messages to top officials

What happened

An imposter used artificial intelligence to mimic Secretary of State Marco Rubio in voice and text messages to high-ranking officials including three foreign ministers, a governor and a member of Congress, according to a State Department cable obtained by The Washington Post.

Who said what

The unknown "actor" left voicemails for officials on the Signal messaging app, favored by the Trump administration, after a fake account with the display name marco.rubio@state.gov was created in mid-June. "In one instance," the imposter "sent a text message inviting the individual to communicate on Signal," the July 3 cable said. In addition, "other State Department personnel were impersonated using email," said the Post.

AI was used to impersonate Rubio earlier this year, when a deepfake video appeared to show him saying he wanted to "cut off Ukraine's access to Elon Musk's Starlink internet service," said The Associated Press. The "impersonation campaign" underscores the scale of the threat posed by "bad actors harnessing quickly evolving voice-cloning technology," said Axios. This "isn't a very sophisticated thing," said Ana Cabrera on MSNBC. "It doesn't take a tech guru to pull this off."

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What next?

The State Department told the Post it would "carry out a thorough investigation" into the Rubio security breach "and continue to implement safeguards to prevent this from happening in the future."