DeepfakeHigh
Whirlpool Reportedly Used AI-Altered Footage of North Carolina State Senator DeAndrea Salvador in Brazilian Advertisement
- Occurred
- Jun 1, 2025
- Published
- Aug 21, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
An advertising campaign created by DM9, a São Paulo–based subsidiary of Omnicom Group, for Whirlpool's Brazilian brand Consul reportedly used AI to alter footage from a 2018 TED Talk by North Carolina State Senator DeAndrea Salvador. The video reportedly modified her voice, statements, and slides to reference Brazilian energy data without her consent, appeared in an award-winning commercial, and later prompted a lawsuit alleging unauthorized use of her likeness and reputational harm.
Developers
- Deepfake technology developers
- Synthetic audio generation technology developers
Deployers
- DM9
- Omnicom Group
- Whirlpool
- Consul
Harmed parties
- DeAndrea Salvador
- General public
- General public of Brazil
- Epistemic integrity
- Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity
- General public of North Carolina
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: AI-altered footage used without consent in commercial, leading to lawsuit over likeness and reputational harm.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8