Conservative activist Robby Starbuck filed a $15 million defamation lawsuit against Google on October 22, 2025, alleging the company's artificial intelligence tools falsely linked him to sexual assault allegations and white nationalist Richard Spencer. The suit, filed in Delaware Superior Court, represents Starbuck's second legal action against a major technology company over AI-generated false information.
The Wall Street Journal broke the news on October 22, reporting that Starbuck claims Google's AI search tools produced defamatory content about him. Google spokesperson José Castañeda responded the same day through the company's official social media account, stating the issues "mostly deal with claims related to hallucinations in Bard that we addressed in 2023."
"We know LLMs aren't perfect, and hallucinations are a known issue, which we disclose and work hard to minimize," Castañeda wrote. The statement, posted at 8:02 PM on October 22, 2025, acknowledged the technical challenges inherent in large language models while defending Google's approach to addressing them.
The complaint follows a similar pattern established earlier this year. In April 2025, Starbuck sued Meta, claiming its AI falsely insisted he participated in the January 6th attack on the Capitol and had been arrested for a misdemeanor. Meta settled that case by hiring Starbuck as an advisor to combat "ideological and political bias" in its chatbot. The exact terms of the Meta settlement remain...
Russia is actively embedding disinformation into chatbots and AI services globally, transforming large language models (LLMs) into a new battlefield for its information warfare. In the digital era...