Mesa Democrat Lorena Austin is the first nonbinary Chicana legislator in the country. They are an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, support housing reform, access to higher education, funding free school lunches and more progressive causes.
And — according to some conservative political activists — they are supporting Republican Andy Biggs for governor.
Turning Point activists Mary Ann Mendoza and Matt Whitmire posted images on social media over the weekend showing Rep. Austin putting up a campaign sign that reads "Democrats for BIGGS" and thanking them for their support of the conservative Republican gubernatorial nominee.
Well, it didn’t take long for folks to start questioning the images.
KJZZ's Wayne Schutsky ran them through an AI detector and found they're likely deepfakes. He joined The Show to talk about what happened.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Wayne.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Good morning.
LAUREN GILGER: This seemed a little fishy from the start, Wayne. What did you notice about these images that seemed a little off?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Right away, I was questioning the images. Not just because — I don’t care how progressive or moderate a lawmaker is down at the Legislature, all the Democrats are pretty lined up behind Gov. Katie Hobbs. So that was the first tick-off.
But also, I’ve seen Rep. Austin a lot down at the Legislature, and something like her tattoos didn’t match the individual or fake individual in this photo that was supposedly them. Those were just alarm bells. So, like you mentioned, I ran it through Deepfake Detector, which is one of these platforms that you run these images through, and they try and detect, they look for telltale signs that they were created by AI. They’re not foolproof, but a lot of studies have shown that with photos, they’re pretty accurate, and it gave it a 100% rating as created by AI.
LAUREN GILGER: Wow. OK, so you reached out to Rep. Austin, and they confirmed they never posted, never posed for these photos. What was their response?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Kind of bewildered. They just thought it was kind of odd. But then basically, Rep. Austin just said that it appeared to be an example of an issue that the Biggs campaign is having, which is trying to appeal to moderates and independents, which polling has shown Gov. Hobbs is having more success with. So they said maybe they turned to one of the more progressive legislators in the Legislature to try and help them with that.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. So that’s another question here. Is it odd, Wayne, that they chose this particular representative to include in this deepfake? They are one of the most progressive lawmakers at the Capitol.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah. From a political perspective, it is. Rep. Austin has been very outspoken anti the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Something like that, for instance, which Congressman Biggs has been very supportive of. It’s just very obvious that this person didn’t align.
Some of it could just be geography. They chose the legislator in their area. Mary Ann Mendoza has run in this district or this community before, and Matt Whitmire has worked on some campaigns in the East Valley before. So it could have just been they picked the Democrat closest to them.
LAUREN GILGER: Tell us more about these two conservative activists here.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: So one of them, Mary Ann Mendoza, she’s run for office before unsuccessfully for the Legislature. Some folks might remember her name because she was actually pulled off of the speaking slot at the RNC back in 2020 after she shared some antisemitic QAnon-related type posts on Twitter. So that kind of is where her name has come up in the past. She’s the mother of a police officer who was killed in a car accident with an undocumented immigrant, and that’s kind of why she had that speaking slot in the first place.
Matt Whitmire, there’s not as much more information about him, but he has posted quite a bit about doing work with Turning Point on various political campaigns, including that failed effort to take over the SRP board earlier this year.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Those posts have been deleted since. Has Turning Point had anything to say about this, Wayne?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Turning Point and Mary Ann Mendoza, neither of them responded to me. I know that Mendoza did give a statement to the Arizona Republic basically saying, “Oh, it was all a joke and journalists don’t get it.” But I mean, there are bigger ramifications here potentially beyond being a joke.
LAUREN GILGER: What about the Biggs campaign? Any comment there?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Basically just saying, “This had nothing to do with us.” ... It’s pretty short and sweet.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. But this comes, Wayne, as the Biggs campaign is not looking at very good numbers. The polling right now shows that he’s trailing Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs quite a bit.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah. And it comes as you’ve seen Katie Hobbs, which she had in her last campaign as well, roll out a Republicans for Hobbs slate of very real people — a lot of former elected officials and obviously her lieutenant governor candidate is a former Republican himself.
So yeah, so it looked like maybe an opportunity to try and do something for the Biggs campaign along the same lines, but again, the campaign says it had nothing to do with it, and it looks like these are Turning Point-affiliated people. There are some of these signs out there that appear to have been paid for by Turning Point’s PAC, so it does seem like this is a Turning Point-centered effort.
LAUREN GILGER: Wayne, is this legal, posting deepfake AI images like this?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: So we have a few laws passed in 2024 that were meant to crack down on this type of thing. ... They’re kind of more civil penalties, but one would give Rep. Austin the opportunity to go to court and basically get a judgment where a judge would declare officially that this is not Rep. Austin, and they could use that on campaign stuff.
It’s supposed to stop this type of activity within 90 days of an election. And then there’s a separate law that if someone does this type of activity campaign-related, they could incur a fine of basically $10 a day for as long as they leave it up. So there’s a few different laws looking at this.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so potential action there. How common though could this become, or is this now, Wayne? Should we expect AI to play a role, AI images like this, deepfakes like this, to pop up in politics and in campaigns more in the future?
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Oh, 100%. I mean, we’ve seen it throughout the campaign season in commercials and things like that. The difference is is those are disclosed, right? ... But we’ve seen candidates even using it to put their opponents into their ads and things like that. And as far as the fake stuff, I mean, going all the way back to ’24 when these laws were passed, if my memory serves, it was done in response to this nationwide issue where there were these robocalls supposedly from former President Biden that I think were telling, trying to encourage New Hampshire voters not to go to the polls.
So I think that was one of the impetuses for one of these laws. So I think, yeah, as AI just becomes more and more advanced and harder to detect, I would imagine we’ll continue seeing this type of thing.
LAUREN GILGER: All right, lots to watch for. KJZZ’s Wayne Schutsky joining us from our Politics Desk. Wayne, thanks a lot.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Yeah, thank you.
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