A mysterious account on TikTok caused a good deal of confusion in the already chaotic nation of Sudan by using artificial intelligence (A.I.) to create convincing fake video clips of former dictator Omar al-Bashir, who was deposed in 2019.
Bashir’s whereabouts are unknown, as Sudan is presently convulsed by a bloody power struggle between the two leaders of the junta that deposed him, army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and militia leader Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Bashir, 79, was imprisoned and in poor health when the battle between Burhan and Dagalo broke out in April. In addition to the charges pending against him in Sudan for money laundering and corruption, Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and genocide.
Rumors have swirled during the chaos of the junta war that Bashir was still being held in the Kober prison in Khartoum, or that he was moved to a military hospital as his health failed, or even that he was released.
The BBC reported Thursday that an anonymous TikTok user called “The Voice of Sudan” with hundreds of thousands of viewers has been posting phony “leaked recordings” of Bashir, using A.I. to generate his voice. The clips include some valid archival footage and recordings of Bashir, mixed with bogus conversations that sound as if they might be telephone interviews on a poor-quality line.
The purpose of this propaganda campaign is difficult to ascertain, even for those familiar with the intricacies of Sudanese politics, but the doctored clips generally create the impression that Bashir is critical of Burhan’s leadership.
One online sleuth deduced that the false Burhan recordings precisely match comments made by a popular Sudanese blogger and podcaster who works under the pseudonym “Al Insirafi.” The Voice of Sudan evidently used A.I. software to distort Al Insirafi’s voice into a passable imitation of Bashir’s.
The BBC managed to get in touch with the individual who runs the Voice of Sudan account, receiving a text message in reply that denied any intention to mislead the public.
“I want to communicate my voice and explain the reality that my country is going through in my style,” the TikTok user said, without explaining why that would require a convincing computer-generated fake of Bashir’s voice.
TikTok deleted the Voice of Sudan account for spreading “false content that may cause significant harm” after the BBC told the social media company about the fake Bashir clips.
Bashir himself was no stranger to trickery and propaganda when he was in power. When protests against his despotic regime were gaining strength in 2019, his secret police created fake “confession” videos in which protest leaders “admitted” to being members of a Darfuri insurgent group. These fake videos did not involve any high-tech trickery — they were manufactured by the old-fashioned method of torturing captive student leaders until they were ready to “confess” to anything.
The BBC quoted tech and media analysts who said the Voice of Sudan fakes are disturbing because they were apparently created by a lone individual with limited resources, but they were evidently convincing enough to accumulate hundreds of thousands of views.
“Sophisticated actors have been able to distort reality for decades, but now the average person with little to no technical expertise can quickly and easily create fake content,” said University of California Berkeley digital forensics researcher Hany Farid.