Arizona’s top elections official has a novel plan to prevent artificial intelligence from supercharging election hoaxes in 2024: Test the technology on himself first.
After his key swing state became a magnet for election fraud conspiracy theories in the 2020 presidential election, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is leading a series of exercises to prepare the Grand Canyon State for a range of likely threats to next year’s vote, foremost among them the use of open access AI tools to amplify disinformation.
Arizona held the first such simulation last weekend, a two-day exercise involving roughly 200 stakeholders from across the state and a handful from the federal government. In it, Fontes tried to fool participants by presenting them with AI-generated audio and video of key officials — including Fontes himself — spinning falsehoods.