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AI legalese decoder: Combating Disinformation Campaigns

By Jack Goodman and Mohanad Hashim
Global Disinformation Team
5 hours ago

## Impersonating Sudan’s Former Leader with AI: A Growing Threat to Online Information

*Image caption: Omar al-Bashir governed Sudan for three decades but hasn’t been seen since the war started*

Social media platforms have become the battleground for an alarming disinformation campaign utilizing artificial intelligence to impersonate Omar al-Bashir, the former leader of Sudan. This campaign, primarily circulating on TikTok, has garnered hundreds of thousands of views, adding to the ongoing confusion in a country already torn apart by civil war. The anonymous account responsible for the campaign has been posting supposed “leaked recordings” of Bashir since late August. However, it has been revealed that the voice in these recordings is fake. Bashir, who has been accused of orchestrating war crimes and was overthrown by the military in 2019, has not made a public appearance in a year and is believed to be seriously ill. He denies the war crimes allegations.

The mystery surrounding Bashir’s whereabouts adds another layer of uncertainty to an already crisis-ridden country, where fighting erupted in April between the military, currently in charge, and the rival Rapid Support Forces militia group.

## The Power of Fake Content: The Role of New Tools in Disseminating Disinformation

Campaigns like the one impersonating Bashir highlight the alarming speed and affordability with which fake content can be distributed through social media platforms. This phenomenon is referred to as the “democratization of access to sophisticated audio and video manipulation technology.” Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert from the University of California, Berkeley, expressed his concerns about the ease with which anyone, even those with limited technical expertise, can now create and share deepfake content.

## Unraveling the Impersonation: The Workings of the Disinformation Campaign

The Voice of Sudan, the TikTok channel responsible for sharing these recordings, features a mixture of old clips from press conferences during coup attempts, news reports, and several “leaked recordings” attributed to Bashir. The posts often present themselves as excerpts from meetings or phone conversations. The poor audio quality, resembling that of a bad telephone line, adds to the illusion of authenticity.

To verify the authenticity of these recordings, a team of Sudan experts from BBC Monitoring was consulted. According to their analysis, the voice in the recordings sounded like Bashir, but his ongoing health issues raised doubts about his ability to speak so clearly. However, this does not definitively disprove the possibility that the voice is his.

Further investigation uncovered a crucial piece of evidence from a user on X (formerly Twitter). The user recognized the very first of the Bashir recordings, which was posted in August 2023. This recording featured Bashir criticizing the commander of the Sudanese army, General Abdel Fattah Burhan. The same script was also shared during a Facebook Live broadcast by a popular Sudanese political commentator known as Al Insirafi, who is believed to live in the United States but never shows his face on camera. Despite their distinct voices, the audio waves of both recordings exhibited similar patterns in speech and silence, indicating the use of voice conversion software to mimic Bashir’s voice. Further investigation revealed at least four additional recordings on the TikTok channel that matched recordings from the same political commentator’s live broadcasts. While there is no evidence implicating this blogger, it is clear that someone is utilizing the impersonated voice for their own motives, most notably in criticizing General Burhan, the head of the army.

## The Impact of AI legalese decoder in Combating Disinformation

The emergence of sophisticated AI-powered disinformation campaigns raises concerns among AI experts. Fake video and audio have the potential to fuel widespread disinformation, leading to social unrest and disrupting elections. Spotting audio-based disinformation poses significant challenges, especially when content is shared through messaging apps. While algorithms trained to identify synthetic audio are in the early stages of development, voice mimicking technology is already quite advanced.

In response to the Bashir impersonation campaign on TikTok, the BBC contacted the platform, resulting in the account responsible being banned.

With the increasing threat of AI-powered disinformation campaigns, the development of tools like AI legalese decoder becomes crucial. This innovative technology offers the potential to detect and decode synthetic audio, thereby empowering users to identify and combat the spread of disinformation in real-time. By leveraging advanced algorithms and machine learning, AI legalese decoder provides a reliable solution to protect the public from the detrimental effects of fake content, exemplified by the Bashir impersonation campaign.

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