Back in early April, as lawyers, judges, and governor-appointed justices announced their candidacy for the historic number of Washington State Supreme Court positions up for grabs this election, I noticed something odd. Attorney Scott Edwards, a lawyer who lost the fight against the state’s new c apital gains tax now running for Supreme Court, Justice Position No. 1 against Gov. Bob Ferguson-appointee Justice Colleen Melody, either had his facts tragically wrong or had generated the text on this website with a hallucinatory AI.  Under the tab “What is the composition of the current Court?” Edwards listed a recently-retired justice, a dead justice, and a person who never sat on the court. Call me an elitist, but it should probably be a requirement to know who’s on the Court if you’re running for it, right?  Here was Edwards’ list of current Washington State Supreme Court justices:  Debra L. Stephens (the chief justice) Charles W. Johnson (the associate justice) Susan Owens (she retired in 2024 and died last year) Sheryl Gordon McCloud Mary I. Yu (not only retired, but held the seat he is running for until December 31, 2025, a mere 181 days ago) Steven C. González G. Helen Whitener Raquel Montoya-Lewis Monty J. Shaw (who?) I could not find a record of a Monty J. Shaw ever sitting on the state’s highest court.  But just to be sure, I asked Chief Justice Debra Stephens if she recalled working with Justice Shaw. “There has never been a justice by that name,” Stephens wrote in a text. “It appears that person has it wrong on their website.”  I emailed Edwards about Monty J. Shaw and the other discrepancies. He never replied, but has since updated his site, which now lists the correct justices, saving a campaign that has raised more than $46,900.  It got me thinking, where did this name come from? Does Monty J. Shaw even exist? I found a few dead men named Monty Shaw, like the former lumber worker in Clarkston, Washington and the North Carolinian Monty who was so renowned for his cooking people knew him as “The Chicken Man.” Of the living Monty Shaws, there’s a recently-laid off account manager at a tech company that uses AI  and a 49-year-old man in Dallas, Texas who actually has the “J” initial. A fictional Monty Shaw appeared in the 2021 reboot of Walker Texas Ranger (his Walkerpedia here). Then there’s singer/songwriter Monty Shaw, “aka Hip Pop,” from Vancouver, BC, who likes “to tell stories about family, love, and Christian worship” with his music, according to a Spotify bio with no mention of an esteemed legal side hustle. Shaw’s profile picture is of an AI-generated bald man strumming an AI-generated guitar. Google AI says he is human. I’m not so sure because he sings with what sounds like an AI voice. Are the Language Learning Models conspiring to convince defenseless humans like Edwards that Monty Shaw is a real living, breathing human who used his actual brain to write songs like “Faraway Daughter” and “Mom You Are My Hero”?  You decide:  The post State Supreme Court Candidate’s (Probably) AI-Generated Website Invented a Fake Sitting Justice, Who May Also Be an AI Musician appeared first on The Stranger. ...read more read less