When conservatives lauch libel claims, they're often vague nuisance lawsuits designed to harass, impoverish and censor critics for having perfectly cromulent opinions. And Robby Starbuck's repution as a far-right activist certainly invites opinions. But his lawsuit against Meta is plainly about a fact: Facebook's AI chatbot falsely claims that Starbuck attended the Jan 6 riots on Capitol Hill and was arrested and charged with a crime. Given that that Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg recently made ostentatiously clear that the site would no longer police misinformation, we have two ingredients of a successful celebrity libel suit: a false statement of fact and a malicious indifference to the truth.
"The case is WILD and has implications for ALL OF US," Starbuck wrote. "On top of falsely calling me a criminal, Meta suggested my kids be taken from me."
Starbuck's lawsuit joins the ranks of similar cases in which people have sued AI platforms over information provided by chatbots. In 2023, a conservative radio host in Georgia filed a defamation suit against OpenAI alleging ChatGPT provided false information by saying he defrauded and embezzled funds from the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun-rights group.
James Grimmelmann, professor of digital and information law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School, said there is "no fundamental reason why" AI companies couldn't be held liable in such cases. Tech companies, he said, can't get around defamation "just by slapping a disclaimer...
DENVER | One of the nation’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, stuck by his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen while testifying ...