CHARLOTTE — Charlotte State Sen. DeAndrea Salvador originally thought the email was spam. She got a series of emails from domains not in the United States that looked weird.
“They had strange subject lines like, ‘Is this you?’ or ‘Is this AI?’” she said. “They kind of screamed, ‘Don’t click on it.’”
But when she got an email to her official legislative email address that seemed to come from a journalist, she decided to look into it more. She made the bizarre discovery that an ad agency manipulated a 2018 Ted Talk speech she gave to advertise appliances in Brazil.
It looked like her. It sounded like her. But Charlotte State Senator DeAndrea Salvador isn't shilling for appliances in Brazil.
— Joe Bruno (@JoeBrunoWSOC9) December 2, 2025
She says an ad agency manipulated her 2018 Ted Talk to make it look like she was.
And it gets even weirder. This ad ended up winning a prestigious… pic.twitter.com/2dGwvjEpuv
Not only was the commercial made, it was given a prestigious honor. It took home the Grand Prix Award for Creative Data at the Cannes Lions Festival.
“It was a shock,” she said.
Salvador is now suing the ad agency, DM9, its parent company, OmniComm, and Whirlpool. The advertisement was for Whirlpool products in Brazil.
Salvador’s Ted Talk was about energy affordability. The ad sources some of her speech and manipulates it in other parts to make it sound like she is discussing energy costs in São Paulo.
The ad can still be seen online.
“It kind of made me almost lose a little bit of trust going through the process of seeing myself say things I never said with no consent, and then wondering, like, where has this been?” she said. “It then kind of begged the question of, how long was this out there? You know, where was it seen? How was it used? Am I being used in other ways that just somebody hasn’t flagged to me yet.”
Cannes Lions has stripped the award from the ad agency. The head of DM9 lost his job over the scandal. DM9, OmniComm and Whirlpool are asking a federal judge in Charlotte to dismiss the lawsuit claiming the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over this case.
Salvador says she is not opposed to AI. She’s a member of the governor’s AI leadership council but says it needs to be used in ethical ways.
“We really have to continue to put people front and center, because if we don’t, there will be really, real consequences and harms,” she said. “Much of which it could be incredibly difficult to reverse course.”
VIDEO: Family warns of AI’s dangerous influence after son’s suicide
©2025 Cox Media Group
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/LH3JSJEF3VBLRJLJQESEAG34AM.png)
