US secretary of state impersonated by AI: foreign ministers and Congress members contacted

Artificial intelligence-powered tools are causing a growing problem of impersonation, and one example can be added to the seemingly growing pile of cases where AI is used to assume the identity of an individual. That example is US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

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A new report from The Washington Post has revealed an imposter pretending to be Rubio contacted several foreign ministers, a US governor, members of Congress, and other officials by sending them voice and text messages that mimicked the voice of Rubio, and somewhat more impressively, his writing style. Currently, authorities don't know who is behind the impersonation attempt, or what the end goal was of the attempts at contacting the government officials.

However, authorities do believe the goal of the impersonation was for the person behind it to gain access to government information or accounts. The Washington Post cites an unknown senior US official and a State Department cable for the source of news, with the source saying the imposter "contacted at least five non-Department individuals, including three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor, and a U.S. member of Congress."

Notably, the imposters' campaign began in mid-June when the Signal account "Mario.Rubio@state.gov" was created, and shortly after, messages and voice mails began being sent from this address to the targets within the US government. The State Department was asked about the impersonation and the agency said it will "carry out a thorough investigation and continue to implement safeguards to prevent this from happening in the future."

Unfortunately, impersonation of an individual's voice is much easier than one may think, with Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley informed The Washington Post that all someone needs is approximately 15 to 20 seconds of audio of the impersonation target, which in the case of Rubio is very easy to obtain, and then upload to one of the many readily available AI tools designed to replicate audio, and boom. You now have an AI trained in the voice of Rubio.

"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."