| NEWS | Leg from p 15 Asked how she planned to balance her campaign and her new role, Mitchell said she would not neglect the position “in the interest of my own campaign.” She also noted that she would not be the first county attorney who led a campaign while in office. “There’s precedent for that,” she said. “But I recognize that this is a special situ- ation that’s going to take an extraordinary amount of hard work. I have worked extraordinarily hard throughout my career. I am surrounding myself with the best people who are going to help me get that accomplished.” Mitchell declined to set a specific timeline for addressing charging backlogs, saying it was still premature. This was “not a situation that is fixed overnight,” Botstein from p 14 the murder victims. Another iteration of the story on show- bizcast.com, an entertainment news website based in Nepal, claims Miller’s son “survived a fatal murder.” Right. Sure he did. Showbizcast.com even uses phony bylines, writer bios, writer headshots, and embedded media in its articles, attempting to add a dash of credibility to the fabricated and plagiarized content. “They’re clearly creating harm inside the U.S.,” Barr said. 44bars.com, yet another pseudo-enter- tainment news website registered in Iceland, made the totally fabricated claim that “Michael hasn’t given accurate data about his date of birth” in a March 20 article. Many of the rip-offs give the illusion that the gruesome crime happened recently. The same website claims that “Additionally, Miller came into the spotlight for a homicide case in 2009.” Additionally? Because there was no spot- light when he sat in a courtroom. Whatever. And it asserts that Miller, who has been in prison for 13 years, “should serve time in jail.” The false information that results from AI paraphrasing, including pointing the finger at the wrong person for a double murder, is especially dangerous when it’s duplicated hundreds of times across the internet, experts say. Websites like showbizcast.com serve articles to users of Facebook and Twitter that look like legitimate, timely news stories. Responsible readers check against reputable local sources like New Times, which explains why the story is trending on our site. But it can be confusing for a news 16 consumer. she said. In a statement, the Arizona branch of the American Civil Liberties Union expressed frustration that there was little public involvement in the appointment process, saying that the board had “ignored community demands to make the appoint- ment process transparent.” “Voters must be allowed to decide who the next Maricopa County Attorney will be — without the huge advantage that incumbency provides,” wrote K.M. Bell, a campaign strategist with the ACLU. As of this morning, however, it is too late. Mitchell will head into the August primary as the incumbent. Mitchell will face her two opponents in the Republican primary in August. The winner will take on Gunnigle, who narrowly lost to Adel 2020, in the general election in November. “When they compare these thousands of articles against New Times and see it’s different, they might not know who to believe,” Hill said. “They share this sala- cious content with their friends, and the fake news spreads.” While it’s funny that travotkt.com called Miller’s children “a 10-year-old woman and a ten-year-old little toddler,” the misstated details of Miller’s case in recent articles constitute libel, Barr said. It’s not an easy legal battle to fight. “Suing them is a practical problem,” Barr said. “Locating who these people are and serving them a lawsuit would be very difficult.” Attorneys and academics worry about the implications. Hill points to Pizzagate, a debunked conspiracy theory that went viral in 2016. Proponents of the theory believed high- ranking Democrats were operating a child sex-trafficking ring in the basement of a popular family-style Washington, D.C., pizza parlor. A North Carolina man stormed the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria, brandishing a rifle in order to “save the children.” Edgar Maddison Welch was sentenced to four years in prison in 2017. “You never know how readers will respond to something,” Hill said. “There are a lot of people who can take some fake news, believe it, and go out and act upon it. That is always dangerous.” Unwittingly, AI robots are contributing to the American fake news crisis that has deteriorated the public’s trust in traditional media especially since 2016, Hill said. What’s most dangerous is the sheer number of iterations of the Miller story that contain false information. “What’s new here is the speed and persistence of this fake news,” Hill said. “You can dismiss it, but you see it again. You see it enough times and you start thinking it’s true.” APRIL 28TH– MAY 4TH, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
