Conservative activist Robby Starbuck is setting his sights on Meta, claiming in a new lawsuit that the social media conglomerate’s AI Chatbot defamed him.
Starbuck alleged that the Meta chatbot falsely accused him of being a “white nationalist” who was arrested on January 6 and has been sued for defamation. The suit filed in the Delaware Superior Court claims the chatbot recommended that the right-wing influencer lose custody of his children, saying he was a danger to them.
“Mr. Starbuck was stunned to learn that Meta AI had created these false and damaging accusations about him out of whole cloth, and that it was asserting these claims to Meta AI users as fact,” the lawsuit filed Tuesday claims.
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Meta launched an AI chatbot in September 2023. The company announced Tuesday it was launching a standalone chatbot running on its Llama AI model to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and X’s Grok and Google Gemini.
The anti-DEI crusader first became aware of the AI chatbot’s alleged distortions of his record on August 5, 2024, when an X user posted them in a screenshot. The suit says the chatbot falsely claimed Starbuck, in addition to being present at the January 6 riot, was linked to the QAnon conspiracy group and was anti-vaccine.
Starbuck then sought to find out what was going on for himself, and uncovered more falsehoods about him being presented as fact, the lawsuit claims, including that he had once faced a lawsuit for defamation himself.
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That same day, Starbuck tagged several of Meta’s top executives in a post on X and called on them to rectify the situation, as well as issued a formal cease-and-desist letter.
“[Mark Zuckerberg] are you cool with your platform attacking people with entirely fictional stories?… What are you going to do about your lying AI?… There has to be accountability,” Starbuck posted on X.
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.
Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan responded to a video Starbuck posted Tuesday in which he called the situation “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,” Kaplan posted on X.
“As part of our continuous effort to improve our models, we have already released updates and will continue to do so,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.
