Description: According to a May 15, 2025 public alert from the FBI and IC3, malicious actors have been using purported AI-generated voice messages and smishing tactics since April 2025 to impersonate senior U.S. officials. The campaign reportedly targets government personnel and their contacts to gain access to personal or official accounts. The FBI warns the scheme may involve credential theft and social engineering, with AI voice cloning used to increase believability.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Unknown voice cloning technology developer , Unknown generative AI developers and Unknown deepfake technology developer developed an AI system deployed by Unidentified scammers and Unidentified fraudsters, which harmed United States state government officials , United States federal government officials , Former United States government officials and Family and friends of United States government officials.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Vishing infrastructure , Unknown voice cloning technology , Unknown deepfake technology , Smishing infrastructure , Mobile messaging networks and Account authentication systems
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1077
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2025-05-15
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
FBI is issuing this announcement to warn and provide mitigation tips to the public about an ongoing malicious text and voice messaging campaign. Since April 2025, malicious actors have impersonated senior US officials to target individuals,…
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
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