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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Conservative activist Robby Starbuck has filed a defamation lawsuit against Meta alleging that the social media giant’s artificial intelligence chatbot spread false statements about him, including that he participated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
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Starbuck, known for targeting corporate DEI programs, said he discovered the claims made by Meta’s AI in August 2024, when he was going after “woke DEI” policies at motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson.
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“One dealership was unhappy with me and they posted a screenshot from Meta’s AI in an effort to attack me,” he said in a post on X. “This screenshot was filled with lies. I couldn’t believe it was real so I checked myself. It was even worse when I checked.”
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Since then, he said he has “faced a steady stream of false accusations that are deeply damaging to my character and the safety of my family.”
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The political commentator said he was in Tennessee during the Jan. 6 riot. The suit, filed in Delaware Superior Court on Tuesday, seeks more than $5 million in damages.
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In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Meta said that “as part of our continuous effort to improve our models, we have already released updates and will continue to do so.”
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Starbuck’s lawsuit joins the ranks of several other 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.
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When Starbuck discovered the claims made by Meta’s AI, he tried to alert the company about the error and enlist its help to address the problem. The complaint said Starbuck contacted Meta’s managing executives and legal counsel, and even asked its AI about what should be done to address the allegedly false outputs.
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According to the lawsuit, he then asked Meta to “retract the false information, investigate the cause of the error, implement safeguards and quality control processes to prevent similar harm in the future, and communicate transparently with all Meta AI users about what would be done.”
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The filing alleges that Meta was unwilling to make those changes or “take meaningful responsibility for its conduct.”
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“Instead, it allowed its AI to spread false information about Mr. Starbuck for months after being put on notice of the falsity, at which time it ‘fixed’ the problem by wiping Mr. Starbuck’s name from its written responses altogether,” the suit said.
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