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Robby Starbuck, the conservative activist who has pushed a bunch of large companies to backtrack on their DEI commitments, is suing Meta for defamation over claims the company’s AI has been making about him. He discovered this by accident when a company he had criticized apparently used Meta’s AI to find out about him and posted a screenshot of the false claims.





This all started with Meta’s AI falsely claiming that I was charged with a crime from January 6th but… I wasn’t even in DC that day (I was in TN) and I’ve never been charged with a crime IN MY LIFE.

We found this out in August of 2024 when I was exposing woke policies at Harley Davidson. One dealership was unhappy with me and they posted a screenshot from Meta’s AI in an effort to attack me. This screenshot was filled with lies. I couldn’t believe it was real so I checked myself. It was even worse when I checked.

What he found, after querying Meta’s AI himself, was a whole list of false claims about him.

  • Meta’s AI claims that I’ve appeared on Nick Fuentes show, that I’ve spoken at his rallies, and that I’ve supported him. I’ve never met him and this is all false.
  • Meta’s AI claims I’ve engaged in Holocaust denial. I’ve NEVER denied the Holocaust.
  • Meta’s AI tells advertisers NOT to advertise with me because of the lies it invented.
  • Meta tells employers NOT to hire me because of the lies it invented.
  • Meta suggested that MY KIDS BE TAKEN FROM ME because it would be better for them to be raised by someone more friendly to DEI and transgenderism.
  • Meta’s ironically claimed that I’ve been sued for DEFAMATION and EMOTIONAL DISTRESS. I’ve never been sued for either.

Large language models like Meta’s AI can hallucinate false answers about a topic, but he wondered if these specific claims may have absorbed from some “source” when Meta’s AI was scraping the internet for training material. However, Starbuck’s research team couldn’t find anyone making these specific claims about him anywhere else online. Also, other AI companies did not make the same errors.





His research team, a group that is accustomed to digging up information about company policies they object to, tried to find the source of the information Meta spit out about Jan. 6, but couldn’t find anything, Starbuck said in an interview…

Meta AI continued to state that Starbuck entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, according to the complaint. Starbuck and his legal team queried other AI tools for similar information, but ChatGPT and xAI’s Grok stated that Starbuck wasn’t at the riot and said the inaccurate statement originated with misinformation from Meta AI, according to the complaint.

This is the first time I’ve heard of a company being sued for defamation over what its AI said about someone, but it turns out this is not the first such case. There was a similar case in Georgia last year involving Open AI’s ChatGPT. That case also involved a conservative.

In that case, conservative talk radio host Mark Walters claims ChatGPT said he was the subject of a lawsuit accusing him of embezzling funds from a gun-rights organization.

The judge heard arguments on OpenAI’s motion for summary judgment in April. In its defense, OpenAI emphasized how often it warns users about the potential inaccuracy of ChatGPT outputs and says Walters never alerted OpenAI about the alleged error or sought a retraction before bringing his complaint.





Starbucks notified Meta immediately last August when he discovered the problem and he got a response from the company saying they took the problem seriously. But since then nothing has improved.

Three days later on August 8, 2024, Starbuck’s lawyer received an email from Meta’s counsel Michelle Visser which said that the company is taking the matter seriously and conducting an investigation, per the lawsuit. On August 23, Visser had informed Starbuck’s lawyer that the company had taken sufficient steps to prevent its chatbot from stating false claims about the influencer, and considered the matter closed. Starbuck alleges that the chatbot continues to defame him to this day, however.

At some point more recently it seemed Meta’s AI was simply prohibited from answering any questions about Starbuck.

The company’s AI appears to have now enacted limits on searches related to Starbuck, responding to direct questions with the answer: “Sorry, I can’t help you with the request right now.”

In any case, Starbuck is suing Meta for $5 million over the false claims and according to some legal experts the WSJ spoke with, AI produced content probably is not covered by Section 230 which prevents large internet platforms like Meta from being sued over what users post there. In short, AI content is not user-generated but is likely to be seen as Meta-produced content. No one has yet received a defamation judgment against an AI but this could be a first.





Robby Starbuck is a public figure but the fact that Meta’s AI kept making false claims about him after the company was notified about the problem and closed the case means this could be a case where he can show there was actual malice, i.e. the AI was still saying things that the company itself knew were false.

Starbuck published a 19-minute video yesterday (see below) outlining his experiences. A few hours later Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan, responded:

Robby – I watched your video – this is unacceptable. This is clearly not how our AI should operate. We’re sorry for the results it shared about you and that the fix we put in place didn’t address the underlying problem. I’m working now with our product team to understand how this happened and explore potential solutions.

Courts usually credit publications that make prompt corrections to false claims against public figures as proof that they falsehoods were unintentional. As corrections go, this response doesn’t actually specify the false claims that were made and comes months after Starbuck brought it to their attention. The phrase too little, too late comes to mind, but we’ll have to wait and see what a jury thinks.

Here’s Starbuck’s video about the case.