Arizona newsletter makes Kari Lake deep fake
The Arizona Agenda, a local newsletter covering state politics, made a deepfake of Kari Lake warning readers about the “terrifying new age” of artificial intelligence (AI) interference in elections.
“Hi, I’m Kari Lake. Subscribe to the Arizona Agenda for hard-hitting, real news and a preview of the terrifying artificial intelligence coming your way in the next election, like this video, which is an AI deepfake the Arizona Agenda made to show you just how good this technology is getting,” Lake appears to say in the video, created by the newsletter.
Lake, a former news anchor who previously ran for Arizona governor, announced her bid for the Senate in October. She is backed by former President Trump and is one of the party’s most prominent election deniers; Lake has not accepted her 2022 gubernatorial election loss and has spent the last several years in court over various challenges to the state's election procedures.
In the video, the deepfake Lake asks viewers if they realized the video was AI-generated and said in the next six months, the technology is going to “get a lot better.”
“By the time the November election rolls around, you’ll hardly be able to tell the difference between reality and artificial intelligence,” the video said.
The newsletter warned that the election this fall will be the first time “any idiot with a computer can create convincing videos,” since AI technology has become exceedingly accessible and powerful.
Hank Stephenson, a reporter for the Agenda, wrote that it is “terrifyingly easy” to create an AI-generated video of a politician and “terrifyingly difficult” to spot fake political content.
“We’re out of the age of ‘fake news’ and entering the era of fake reality,” Stephenson wrote.
The newsletter acknowledged the risks of creating disinformation, but said it made the Lake deepfake to show how easy — and free — doing so can be. Stephenson compiled a guide to show readers how to spot the fake content and warned of the “profound implications” that the nearly unregulated technology poses on politics and society.
The Hill has reached out to Lake for comment on the videos.