The State Department is investigating episodes in which one or more people used artificial intelligence to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio in messages to top foreign diplomats and U.S. officials, according to an official at the agency.
Mr. Rubio’s office sent a cable, or an agency memo, last week to State Department employees about the efforts to impersonate him.
When asked on Tuesday about the cable and the episodes, the department’s press office issued a statement from a senior official that said the department was “aware of this incident and is currently investigating the matter.”
“The department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information, and continuously takes steps to improve the department’s cybersecurity posture to prevent future incidents,” the statement said.
The person or people impersonating Mr. Rubio sent text and voice messages, including over the encrypted chat app Signal, to at least five people outside the State Department. The recipients included a governor, a member of Congress and three foreign ministers, according to the cable, which was reported earlier by The Washington Post. The cable was dated July 3.
Mr. Rubio’s voice and mannerisms can be observed on many online sites. He is a ubiquitous presence on television, holds news conferences and appears in many photo opportunities in which he exchanges words with other diplomats. Before becoming secretary of state this year, he was a senator from Florida who spoke frequently at congressional hearings and other public appearances, including when he ran against Donald J. Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
Mr. Rubio is known to use Signal, a popular messaging platform among U.S. and foreign officials, journalists and foreign policy analysts. The secretary’s use of the app became public after Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, wrote an article in March in which he described how he had been mistakenly added to a Signal chat by Michael Waltz, the White House national security adviser at the time. Mr. Waltz had created a Signal group to discuss a U.S. bombing campaign against the Houthi militia in Yemen.
Mr. Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and other top aides to President Trump sent messages in the group chat. Days after Mr. Goldberg was added to the chat, the Pentagon warned employees against using Signal because of a technological vulnerability.
That episode ignited a debate about the sharing of potential classified information over the app. It also revealed that U.S. officials might have been flouting rules that mandated the retention of records, since a Signal chat can be set to automatically delete messages after a specified period.
Mr. Trump fired Mr. Waltz soon after the Signal leak and named Mr. Rubio as the interim national security adviser. Mr. Rubio was also the acting administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, which he had helped dismantle, and the acting archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration.
Mr. Rubio plans to fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Tuesday to attend a gathering of foreign ministers from Asian nations. It is unclear whether any of those ministers received messages impersonating him.
The trip will be Mr. Rubio’s first to Asia as secretary of state. The State Department said on Monday that he was “focused on reaffirming the United States’ commitment to advancing a free, open and secure Indo-Pacific region.” Trade issues are sure to be part of the diplomatic talks after Mr. Trump’s tariff threats this week against 14 countries, including major Asian partners.
The State Department has recently grappled with other impersonations possibly created with artificial intelligence. In May 2024, a deepfake video of Matthew Miller, then the department’s spokesman, circulated online. Its creators appeared to want to create confusion and hostility toward the United States over its policies on the war in Ukraine and on Russia.
Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department for The Times.
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