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Incident 1141: Purported AI Voice Cloning Used to Impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Description: Sometime in mid-June 2025, an unknown actor reportedly used AI voice-cloning and text generation to impersonate U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The impostor allegedly contacted at least five high-level officials, including three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor, and a member of Congress, via Signal and text messages. The actions reportedly aimed to manipulate targets into sharing sensitive information or account access.
Editor Notes: This incident is a specific variant of Incident 1077. See also Incident 1085. For another prominent but unrelated AI incident involving Marco Rubio, see Incident 974.

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Alleged: Unknown voice cloning technology developer and Unknown deepfake technology developer developed an AI system deployed by Unknown actors impersonating Marco Rubio and Unknown actors, which harmed United States Department of State , Officials targeted by impersonator of Marco Rubio , Marco Rubio , Government of the United States and Epistemic integrity.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Unknown voice cloning technology developer , Unknown deepfake technology developer and Signal

Incident Stats

Incident ID
1141
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2025-06-15
Editors
Daniel Atherton

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Incident Occurrence+1
Marco Rubio Impersonated with Voice AI reached senior government officials
Marco Rubio Impersonated with Voice AI reached senior government officials

Marco Rubio Impersonated with Voice AI reached senior government officials

washingtonpost.com

AI scammer posing as Marco Rubio targets officials in growing threat

AI scammer posing as Marco Rubio targets officials in growing threat

theguardian.com

Marco Rubio Impersonated with Voice AI reached senior government officials
washingtonpost.com · 2025

An impostor pretending to be Secretary of State Marco Rubio contacted foreign ministers, a U.S. governor and a member of Congress by sending them voice and text messages that mimic Rubio's voice and writing style using artificial intelligen…

AI scammer posing as Marco Rubio targets officials in growing threat
theguardian.com · 2025

An unknown fraudster has used artificial intelligence to impersonate the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, contacting at least five senior officials.

According to a state department cable first seen by the Washington Post and confirmed by…

Variants

A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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