Will the Real Sarah Stevens Please Stand Up?

Over the past few weeks, a curious image began appearing on the North Carolina Republican Party’s social media feeds.

It looks like a flyer in the familiar style of a factcheck, with two columns: “What They Claim” and “The Facts—Her Proven Record.” 

At the top, there’s a name: Sarah Stevens, the party’s candidate for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, an institution the GOP flipped to its advantage in 2022 and has prioritized dominating ever since. 

Stevens has run an unusually quiet campaign, with few ads or public events. At the same time, she’s faced criticism for her efforts as a state legislator to water down a bill seeking to expand the opportunity for survivors of child sexual abuse to sue their abusers and affiliated institutions, plus other actions her critics claim as proof she “protects predators.” Into the hush came the flyer, declaring, “The attack ads take real events, remove the context, and draw the wrong conclusions.”

Despite text protesting the distortion of real events, there’s something unreal about the image. The smiling woman pictured next to the name at the top of the flyer has a round face framed by cropped white curls, just like Stevens. Yet details are subtly off: the shape of her teeth, the way her face bends to her smile. She’s dressed in black, with generously draped sleeves, much like a judicial robe. On closer inspection, however, the garment betrays its defects. The ghost of a lapel on one side suggests that this may not be a photograph at all. OpenAI, asked to evaluate the image, says it was created with the company’s tools.

If the woman in the black robe were in fact Stevens, she may have faced new problems. The apparent ad lacks the funding disclosure required on political advertising. And since Stevens is not a judge, she is not supposed to wear the profession’s signature garb, according to the guidance the state’s Judicial Standards Commission gives to candidates and ethics experts who are familiar with the North Carolina standards. 

The image claiming to set the record straight has introduced a host of new and perplexing questions.

Was it intended to mislead? Why would the party that recruited Stevens use a doppelganger to defend her record? And why would the candidate willingly cede the spotlight to a digital double?

Bound By Confidentiality

The state’s Code of Judicial Conduct says judges and judicial candidates should not “intentionally and knowingly misrepresent” their “identity or qualifications.” 

What exactly that means in the AI era is hard to know. The Judicial Standards Commission wouldn’t answer questions. An unsigned email to The Assembly from the communications office of the Administrative Office of the Courts only further demonstrated the commission’s unusual and growing level of secrecy, including avoiding a question about whether non-judges are prohibited from wearing robes in political messaging. 

“Matter of interpretation for the Commission,” said the email.

Does it matter who paid for or distributed the political materials? 

“Matter of interpretation for the Commission.”

Does it matter whether the image was produced by artificial intelligence? 

“Matter of interpretation for the Commission.”

Has the commission developed or discussed any guidance relating to AI in politics? 

“This information is confidential.”

Whether the commission sends letters to candidates who are not sitting judges to warn them that their behavior conflicts with the guidance is—wait for it—also “confidential.”

The anonymous emailer said The Assembly’s interview request had been forwarded to the commission’s chair, Judge Jeff Carpenter, an associate judge on the N.C. Court of Appeals, “who is bound by confidentiality on these questions.” Carpenter didn’t call.

The State Bar, in charge of reviewing complaints against judicial candidates who aren’t judges, was somewhat less evasive.

In a written statement, Executive Director Peter Bolac identified the part of the Code of Judicial Conduct that could be implicated while noting that the code itself made no mention of candidates wearing robes. Any complaint about a non-judge candidate would go through the standard disciplinary process, Bolac said. 

Questions about the relevance of funding, distribution, and use of AI went unanswered.

‘Some Rando’

Zach Almond, the state Republican Party’s executive director, said “some rando,” unaffiliated with the GOP, created the Stevens flyer. 

The activist corners of the Internet are littered with similar images, he said. “It’s basically old people discovering AI,” Almond said. “They started using it for invitations and things of that nature, and then it has now morphed into folks using it for pushing whoever they like.”

Despite its questionable provenance and potential ethical implications for Stevens, the NCGOP has posted the flyer repeatedly on social media. Almond thinks that’s fine. “It’s already out there on the world of the Internet,” he said. And as he sees it, “The substance of it wasn’t really wrong.” 

Stevens’ campaign finance disclosures show more than $3,000 in payments to Almond, with two purposes listed: “field supervisor” and “printing services.” But Almond downplayed that connection when asked about it, saying he sold the campaign printed materials—handouts, maybe, or envelopes. 

Prior to being named the party’s executive director in March, around the time of the most recent payments listed, Almond ran a public relations and lobbying firm and sometimes managed judicial races. “I have never run, nor do I run her campaign,” he said of Stevens. 

Despite his background and current position, Almond said determining whether the flyer was an ad, obliged to particular standards under the law, “is above my pay grade.”

In any case, he said, the tide of images like this is unstoppable: “If little Miss Sue out in Timbuktu wants to create something, ain’t nobody gonna stop her.”

Post, Repost

It wasn’t just the state Republican Party that seemed to lend legitimacy to the flyer by sharing it. Stevens’ campaign did, too.

On September 28, the campaign Facebook page shared a post by a user who goes by Katiegates Revivingtherepublic that featured the flyer and the text: “Sarah Stevens for NC Supreme Court. Setting the record straight.”

A few days later, the campaign account shared another post featuring the image from Republican Court of Appeals Judge April Wood. 

“Attacking Sarah Stevens for doing her job as a defense attorney is wrong,” Woods wrote in the attached message. “Representing an accused person does not mean endorsing the conduct alleged.”

Stevens said she initially shared the flyer after her sister showed it to her; she thought it was a good summary of what she had done and didn’t notice that she appeared to be wearing a judicial robe. “I don’t like to look at my pictures,” Stevens said. “I don’t like to have my picture made, really, so I didn’t look that closely.” 

She approved a different AI-created image the party made around the same time that contrasts her with her opponent, Justice Anita Earls. “Which picture is me? Which one is really, really me?” Stevens asked. “I don’t know that either one of those are really my picture.” 

The NCGOP has distributed at least one more peculiar image of Stevens. An August Instagram post includes a portrait of the candidate that seems to match the one she used for her Facebook profile picture and the one it used to promote the judicial slate. But in this iteration, one item is missing: her blouse.

Stevens said she didn’t intend to mislead: “I have never professed to be a judge. Never, never held myself out to be a judge. Never, never worn a robe because I never even stood in the choir.” 

“I can talk to the state party about, let’s do it and put the proper picture up there,” she said of the factcheck. But she hasn’t taken the posts down.

In the meantime, her campaign has begun running a paid ad on Facebook. As the words “Paid for by Stevens for Justice” appear in small type at the bottom of the video, the candidate says: “I believe in straight talk, not slick, misleading ads, and that’s the leadership I’ll bring to the Supreme Court.”