Arizona election officials trained to prepare for deepfakes ahead of election

In the swing state of Arizona, election officials are being trained on how to differentiate between artificial intelligence-generated “deepfake” videos and real ones as they brace themselves for potential misinformation ahead of and during the 2024 general election.

In a December 2023 training, election officials were greeted by a video from Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes wishing them luck in the training. Deepfakes are videos in which a real person, oftentimes celebrities or politicians, are manipulated using AI to say typically false information.