AI Imposter Uses Rubio Voice to Target Officials

In addition to the effort to impersonate Rubio, several recent impersonation attempts have targeted high-profile U.S. officials. In May, someone breached the phone of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and began placing calls and messages to senators, governors and business executives while pretending to be Wiles, the Wall Street Journal reported. The episode spurred a White House and FBI investigation, although President Donald Trump dismissed its significance, saying Wiles is “an amazing woman” who “can handle it.”

In March, then-White House national security adviser Michael Waltz inadvertently added a journalist to a Signal group chat discussing highly sensitive U.S. attack plans in Yemen, an incident that contributed to Waltz’s ouster and curtailed the widespread use of the app for national security group meetings. Rubio has since been appointed as Trump’s national security adviser. But on an individual level, government officials in the United States and elsewhere continue to use the app for personal and professional communications, given its reliable end-to-end encryption.

Once malicious actors obtain phone numbers linked to an official’s Signal account, the impersonation part is easy, said Farid.

“You just need 15 to 20 seconds of audio of the person, which is easy in Marco Rubio’s case. You upload it to any number of services, click a button that says ‘I have permission to use this person’s voice,’ and then you type what you want him to say,” said Farid. “Leaving voicemails is particularly effective because it’s not interactive.”

In May, the FBI issued a warning that “malicious actors” were impersonating senior U.S. officials in an “ongoing malicious text and voice messaging campaign” intended to target other senior government leaders and their contacts. The campaign relied on AI-generated voice messages, according to the FBI, and was likely meant to “elicit information or funds.”

“If you receive a message claiming to be from a senior U.S. official,” the FBI warned at the time, “do not assume it is authentic.”

Other forms of impersonation have spread across the globe. In June, Ukraine’s Security Service announced that Russian intelligence agents were impersonating the agency in an effort to recruit Ukrainian civilians for sabotage missions. The same month, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Center and the Canadian Center for Cyber Security said scammers were utilizing artificial intelligence to impersonate senior government officials in a call- and text-driven campaign to steal sensitive information or money, or to insert malware into computer networks.