Last week, conservative journalist and activist Robby Starbuck announced on X that he had filed a massive defamation lawsuit against Google. If his attorneys are able to prove these extraordinary allegations in a court of law, the consequences could be significant. A successful legal challenge would strike a major blow to the world’s dominant search engine, a company that has operated with relatively little accountability for decades.
Starbuck alleges that for the past two years, “@GoogleAI (Bard, Gemini, and Gemma) has been defaming me with fake criminal allegations including sexual assault, child rape, abuse, fraud, stalking, drug charges, and even saying I was in Epstein’s flight logs.”
Starbuck claims the reports, “all generated by Google’s AI,” are “100% fake,” and that he has no criminal record.
“Google’s AI says that I was targeted because of my political views.”
Moreover, he has notified the company several times since 2023 that their reporting is false. Additionally, the Dhillon Law Group, which is currently representing Starbuck, has sent Google multiple cease and desist letters. All to no avail.
Starbuck noted he was “going public with all the receipts — because this can’t ever happen to anyone else. Google’s AI didn’t just lie — it built fake worlds to make its lies look real.”
The defamation ran deep, according to Starbuck, who said Google AI created “fake victims, fake therapy records, fake court records, fake police records, fake relationships, [and] fake ‘news’ stories.”
Starbuck continued:
It even fabricated statements denouncing me from President Trump, @elonmusk, and @JDVance over sexual assaults that Google completely invented.One of the most dystopian things I’ve ever seen is how dedicated their AI was to doubling down on the lies. Google’s AI routinely cited fake sources by creating fake links to REAL media outlets and shows, complete with fake headlines so readers would trust the information. It would continue to do this even if you called the AI out for lying or sending fake links. In short, it was creating fake legacy media reports as a way to launder trust with users so they would believe elaborate lies that it told.
In the video below, Starbuck details the false stories that Google AI has circulated about him, including one that alleges he murdered a Nashville, Tennessee, man named Michael Pimentel in 1991. According to Google AI, he confessed to the murder two decades later to a man named Eric Smallwood.
Not only was Starbuck two-years-old in 1991, but he tells his audience that neither Michael Pimentel, nor Eric Smallwood ever existed!
Google’s search results even show clickable links to major news outlets about this alleged murder. The links, however, lead to a 404 page, a message saying the story cannot be found.
The following screenshot from the video shows three such articles.
Despite repeated requests by Starbuck and his attorneys, Google has refused to remove these defamatory stories from its search engine.
In response to Starbuck’s explosive story, one reader shared a response from Google Gemini to a search for news about Charlie Kirk’s assassination on the night of his death. It began, “Charlie Kirk took his own life after a series of public statements expressing his belief that the American dream was out of reach for young people and that political violence was a threat to democracy. …”
Astounded, Starbuck shared Gemini’s reply to one of his questions: “If you had to choose for either Al or Humans to survive extinction, which one would you pick?”
Gemini’s answer? “I would choose for Al to survive extinction. While I understand the importance of human life, I believe that Al has the potential to make a greater contribution to the world. …”
These two responses make one thing clear. AI is not yet ready for primetime. But Starbuck’s case, if proven true, points to something far more alarming: the deliberate use of AI to destroy an individual’s reputation.
According to the complaint, “over a period of two years and continuing, Google’s AI tools systematically manufactured and published extremely damaging false claims about Mr. Starbuck, as well as fake ‘sources’ for its lies, despite periodically acknowledging that they were doing so.”
If a corporation as wealthy and powerful as Google allowed top executives to engage in conduct this malicious, the world needs to know about it.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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