11 Aug 28th-Sept 3rd, 2025 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | Uncanny Valley Arizona Supreme Court explained death penalty ruling with ‘dystopian’ AI video. BY MORGAN FISCHER “H ello, I’m Daniel,” a young man wearing a blue suit says to the camera. His lips move, but those movements don’t quite match the robotic-sounding words coming out of his mouth. He stands in front of U.S. and Arizona flags and a TV with the Arizona Supreme Court’s seal, but the edges of his head and suit are fuzzy, as if he’s using a preset Zoom background. The closer you look, the less normal he appears. “Daniel” is an artificial intelligence avatar, created in March by the Arizona Supreme Court. In the last five months, “Daniel” and his female-coded counter- part, “Victoria,” have provided short rundowns of often esoteric judicial opin- ions in a concise, easy-to-understand — if often uncanny — manner. They are the brainchildren (if not the actual children) of Chief Justice Ann Timmer, who aims to make Arizona’s sometimes confusing court system more accessible and understand- able to the average person. Earlier this month, though, viewers of a recent “Daniel” were more creeped out than educated. In an Aug. 5 video posted to YouTube, the AI avatar, with its shape- shifting facial hair and overexaggerated blinks, announced that the court had denied an appeal from death row inmate Jasper Phillip Rushing, upholding his conviction and nudging him one step closer to a state-sanctioned killing. Rushing was initially sentenced to 28 years in jail after the 2001 murder of his stepfather. In 2010, he murdered and muti- lated his cellmate, Shannon Palmer, in the Lewis Prison Complex in Buckeye. In 2015, a Maricopa County jury found Rushing guilty of Palmer’s murder and sentenced him to death. The Arizona Supreme Court vacated his death sentence in 2017 after the trial court failed to tell jurors he was ineligible for parole. A second trial jury also sentenced him to death, leading to Rushing’s second appeal to the state Supreme Court, which, as “Daniel” explained, was denied. Many found the “Daniel” video announcing Rushing’s case off-putting. The organization Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona compared the video to a “Black Mirror” episode in an Instagram post. Social media users responding to the post felt similarly. A user named Brian Schubert called the video “disgusting” and described the avatar as a “glorified cartoon.” “Yuck,” wrote a user named Holly. “And it’s smiling? Wtf.” On Bluesky, the video was described as “fucking gross,” “horrifying” and a sign- post of “dystopian hell.” In an interview with Phoenix New Times, DPAA survivor advocacy coordi- nator Destiny Garcia criticized the “bureau- cratic and cold” video as “a blatant form of dehumanization.” Survivors of violence “don’t want justice delivered by an algo- rithm,” she said, adding that if an informa- tional video is necessary, actual people should deliver this type of news. A screenshot from an AI-generated video used by the Arizona Supreme Court to announce a ruling in a death penalty case. (Arizona Supreme Court) >> p 12 | NEWS |
