HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Purported Deepfake Audio Allegedly Impersonates U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Starlink Disinformation Campaign

March 4, 2025

A purported deepfake audio clip, reportedly AI-generated, was allegedly used to impersonate U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The fabricated clip falsely claimed he vowed to pressure Elon Musk into cutting Ukraine’s access to Starlink. The reported clip was inserted into a purportedly manipulated CNN interview and subsequently spread across multiple languages, contributing to disinformation about U.S.-Ukraine relations. Forensic analysis confirmed the audio was AI-generated.

This incident highlights the importance of responsible AI governance in preventing harm. For those interested in shaping trustworthy AI practices, we invite you to join HISPI Project Cerebellum and learn more about our TAIM (Govern) efforts.
JOIN US

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

Alleged deployer
unknown-disinformation-actors, disinformation-spreaders, misinformation-spreaders
Alleged developer
unknown-voice-cloning-technology, unknown-deepfake-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
truth, relations-between-the-united-states-and-ukraine, media-integrity, marco-rubio, government-of-ukraine, government-of-the-united-states, journalistic-integrity, epistemic-integrity, national-security-and-intelligence-stakeholders

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/974

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.