Kari Lake, a close ally of former president Donald Trump who is seeking the Senate seat in Arizona, was the target of a deepfake ad created by an online news site. (Thomas Simonetti/For The Washington Post)
6 min

Hank Stephenson has a finely tuned B.S. detector. The longtime journalist has made a living sussing out lies and political spin.

But even he was fooled at first when he watched the video of one of his home state’s most prominent congressional candidates.

There was Kari Lake, the Republican Senate hopeful from Arizona, on his phone screen, speaking words written by a software engineer. Stephenson was watching a deepfake — an artificial-intelligence-generated video produced by his news organization, Arizona Agenda, to underscore the dangers of AI misinformation in a pivotal election year.