Incident 1087: Campaign Featuring Purported AI-Generated Audio Attributed to Omar al-Bashir Spreads During Sudanese Conflict

Description: Beginning in late August 2023, a TikTok channel called The Voice of Sudan circulated purported AI-generated audio claiming to be leaked recordings of former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir. Experts identified several recordings as voice-cloned fabrications, derived from unrelated broadcasts by a political commentator. The campaign emerged during Sudan's civil war and appeared designed to influence political perceptions. TikTok later removed the account for violating synthetic media policies.

Editor Notes: Although major reporting on this incident appeared in October 2023, available evidence indicates that the AI-generated audio impersonations of Omar al-Bashir began circulating on TikTok in late August 2023. The incident date has therefore been set as as 08/20/2023 to reflect the likely onset of the campaign. This date is approximate and based on the earliest known activity referenced in the BBC's 10/04/2023 investigation. It was added to the AI Incident Database on 05/31/2025. Please refer to Incident 1089 for wider context.

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Alleged: Unknown voice cloning technology developer and Unknown deepfake technology developer developed an AI system deployed by The Voice of Sudan, which harmed Omar al-Bashir and General public of Sudan.

Alleged implicated AI systems: Unknown voice cloning technology and Unknown deepfake technology

Incident Stats

Incident ID

1087

Report Count

Incident Date

2023-08-20

Editors

Daniel Atherton

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

AI: Voice cloning tech emerges in Sudan civil war

bbc.com

AI-driven impersonation campaign of Sudan’s ex-leader goes viral on TikTok

dig.watch

The Deepfake is a powerful weapon in the war in Sudan

africanarguments.org

bbc.com · 2023

A campaign using artificial intelligence to impersonate Omar al-Bashir, the former leader of Sudan, has received hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok, adding online confusion to a country torn apart by civil war.

An anonymous account ha…

dig.watch · 2023

In a recent report by the BBC, an anonymous campaign employing artificial intelligence to impersonate Sudan's former leader, Omar al-Bashir, has gained widespread attention on TikTok, amplifying online confusion in a country already grappli…

africanarguments.org · 2024

n April 2024, an image of a building engulfed in flames went viral on Facebook in Sudan. The image was widely shared with captions that claimed the building was part of Al-Jazeera University in Wad Madani city, and the Sudanese army had bom…

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.