Arizona official uses deepfake version of himself to warn voters not to be fooled by AI

Arizona’s Secretary of State Adrian Fontes posted a video warning voters ahead of the2024 election to protect themselves from being duped by AI-generated deepfakes and other fabricated political content ahead of this year's election.

Though by all account it appeared to be Mr Fontes delivering the video message, it was not; it was actually a deepfake of Mr Fontes, meant to drive home the warning and to make the point that AI-generated content can be convincing to the untrained eye.

He shared the video during Sunday’s episode of Meet the Press.

In the video, the deepfake of Mr Fontes introduces itself and proceeds to explain what it is and what its purpose is before reminding viewers that it is just an «impersonation» of a real human.

«Hello, this is a public service advisory featuring an AI version of Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. This video was produced as part of our 2024 statewide election security tabletop exercise,» the AI version of Mr Fontes said. «It was created with both the consent and the cooperation of the real secretary Fontes, which, again, is not me, I'm an AI-impersonation of him.»

While the dialogue delivery is quite stilted and robotic and the deepfake makes a few perplexing facial animations, the video is otherwise relatively convincing as real footage of the Arizona official.

Meet the Press host Kristen Welker called the footage «chilling» and then asked Mr Fontes why he felt it was necessary to build a deepfake of himself.

«In bootcamp… we looked at the weapons of our enemies and we trained against them as much as possible,» he said. «AI is not a new weapon, it's an amplifier and a magnifier of mis and disinformation.»

He said he wanted to ensure that elections officials were