This story originally aired on “Marketplace Tech” on April 12.President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by a razor-thin margin, flipping the state blue for the first time in more than 20 years. As a result, Arizona became a hotbed of election misinformation and conspiracy theories, as false claims of a stolen election led to protests outside voting centers, a GOP-backed ballot audit and threats against election workers.Now, with just over 200 days until the 2024 election, experts warn that artificial intelligence could supercharge misinformation and disinformation in this year’s race. So how are election officials in a state that has already been in the trenches preparing for another battle over facts?Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontas to learn more. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.Adrian Fontes: Generative artificial intelligence is not a new weapon in the arsenal. It is an expander, an amplifier of the old weapons of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. The notion is to knock people off their games, whether it’s spoofing elections officials like myself or candidates. You don’t know what you don’t know, so being exposed to a potential weapon really helps you recognize it better if and when you actually have to face it in the real world. It’s not a new thing. It’s not strange, right? You’ve dealt with it, you’ve kind of figured it out.Lily Jamali: I want to dwell on that point for a moment — this idea that misinformation is not a new problem, we just have n …
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