Ask AI Suarez With AI in the mix, the 2024 presidential race keeps getting weirder. SOS America PAC, a Super PAC backing “Bitcoin mayor” Francis Suarez’s 2024 presidential bid, just released a tool called “Ask AI Suarez,” a realistic, AI-powered avatar of the candidate designed to answer questions about the current Miami mayor and his campaign. “Hi, I’m AI Francis Suarez,” the bot says as it introduces itself. “You’ve probably heard that my namesake, conservative Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, is running for president. I’m here to answer questions you may have about Mayor Suarez’s proven agenda for economic prosperity, cutting spending and supporting our police.” “So,” it continues, “how can I help?” Though a spokesperson for Suarez’s campaign told The Miami Herald that the official campaign confusingly has “nothing to do” with AI Suarez or “whatever the PAC does,” Suarez and the funding body have deep financial ties. And in any case, a deep-pocketed campaign spender deploying a lifeless deepfake of a presidential candidate to interface with citizens feels deeply dystopian — not to mention a strange, cheap, and arguably lazy replacement for the real deal. Just Why Like other AI deepfakes, the bot’s attempt at realism, from its tinny voice to its waxy expression, is just inhuman enough to be deeply unsettling. The format itself — which requires users to speak to their computers like they’re trying to talk to their Amazon remotes — is tedious, to say the least. On top of that, it’s unclear why it even needs…Bizarre AI Deepfake Answer Questions on Behalf of Presidential Candidate