Conservative Activist Robby Starbuck Sues Meta Over AI Chatbot's False Claims

Robby Starbuck sues Meta over what its AI said about him.

In between insisting that corporations need to end DEI efforts, Starbuck is suing because Meta AI "repeatedly published -- and continues to publish -- provably false and defamatory statements falsely accusing Starbuck of participating in the January 6th Capitol riot and having been arrested for a misdemeanor." Meta global policy head Joel Kaplan -- who said in January its products would have "no new fact checks and no fact checkers" -- apologized for the incorrect results. Does anyone have an idea about how the company could avoid this kind of problem?

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck sues Meta over AI responses about him

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. 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. "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." 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." 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. 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." 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. 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. 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." The filing alleges that Meta was unwilling to make those changes or "take meaningful responsibility for its conduct." "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. Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, responded to a video Starbuck posted to X outlining the lawsuit and called the situation "unacceptable." "This is clearly not how our AI should operate," Kaplan said on X. "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 said he is working with Meta's product team to "understand how this happened and explore potential solutions." Starbuck said that in addition to falsely saying he participated in the the riot at the U.S. Capitol, Meta AI also falsely claimed he engaged in Holocaust denial, and said he pleaded guilty to a crime despite never having been "arrested or charged with a single crime in his life." Meta later "blacklisted" Starbuck's name, he said, adding that the move did not solve the problem because Meta includes his name in news stories, which allows users to then ask for more information about him. "While I'm the target today, a candidate you like could be the next target, and lies from Meta's AI could flip votes that decide the election," Starbuck said on X. "You could be the next target too."

Meta executive apologizes to conservative anti-DEI activist for AI responses

Meta's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.Carlos Barria / Reuters filr A top executive at tech giant Meta has issued a public apology to conservative influencer Robby Starbuck after Starbuck filed a lawsuit alleging that Meta's artificial intelligence chatbot produced responses containing false and defamatory information about him. Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, told Starbuck in a post on X Tuesday night that he was personally involved with trying to fix the situation. "Robby -- I watched your video -- this is unacceptable. This is clearly not how our AI should operate," Kaplan wrote on X, which is one of Meta's competitors. He referred to a 20-minute video in which Starbuck laid out his claims, including that Meta's AI falsely associated him with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the QAnon conspiracy theory. "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 continued. "I'm working now with our product team to understand how this happened and explore potential solutions." It's unusual for a C-suite corporate executive to apologize so publicly and so quickly to one individual, let alone someone who had just sued his company. Kaplan's apology came a few hours after Starbuck sued Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, in state court in Delaware. In 2021, Adam Mosseri, the Meta executive in charge of Instagram, apologized for a software bug that had deleted posts by Indigenous activists, and last year he apologized for the company taking action against a transgender user. Lower-level staff also sometimes apologize for Meta errors, and last year Kaplan admitted two mistakes by the company without issuing an apology. But Starbuck's claims and his stature are also unusual. A rising figure in right-wing media, Starbuck says that Meta's AI invented false information about him seemingly out of thin air -- a problem that he says undermines the value of Meta's AI technology. Meta has become increasingly attentive to the concerns of American conservatives over the past year, after President Donald Trump won the Republican nomination and then the White House. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pivoted the company to align more closely with Trump, including by promoting Kaplan, a longtime Republican operative, to be Meta's head of lobbying. Starbuck said the apology from Kaplan was not enough. In a statement to NBC News on Wednesday, Starbuck said he wanted a public apology from Zuckerberg, changes to Meta's AI systems and compensation for the damages he says Meta had caused him. "At the end of the day these lies harmed me, my wife and my kids," Starbuck said. "This put them in danger. I want to ensure that never happens to anyone else no matter what their political beliefs are." Asked for a response to the lawsuit Wednesday, a Meta spokesperson pointed to Kaplan's apology. Starbuck, a former music video producer based in Tennessee, has ridden to prominence in the conservative media ecosystem in recent years with videos attacking diversity, equity and inclusion programs (DEI) at major corporations, including Walmart. He sought a House seat as a Republican in 2022. In his lawsuit, Starbuck says he learned that Meta's AI chatbot was saying false things about him last August. That's when a motorcycle dealership in Vermont posted a screenshot on X of Meta's chatbot saying that Starbuck was at the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and had been "linked to" the QAnon conspiracy theory -- two claims that Starbuck says are not true. He says he was in Tennessee the day of the Capitol riot and that he's a longtime critic of QAnon. Starbuck says in the lawsuit that he contacted Meta and its lawyers about the claims. According to the suit, a Meta lawyer responded to Starbuck's lawyer last August by email, saying in part: "Meta takes the assertions set forth in your letter seriously, and an investigation into them is underway." But Meta ultimately did not implement changes or take responsibility over the ensuing months, the lawsuit alleges. Instead, the suit says, the problem got worse as the chatbot produced additional serious allegations about him. The lawsuit claims defamation. It asks for $5 million in general damages plus unspecified punitive damages and an injunction against future defamatory statements by Meta about Starbuck. The lawsuit was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Internet companies have for decades enjoyed a kind of shield against many defamation lawsuits, thanks to a 1996 law commonly known as Section 230. Legal experts, though, say it's unclear whether that law applies to output from generative AI software, and courts have not yet weighed in. It's unclear how Meta's chatbot came up with its information about Starbuck. According to the lawsuit, Starbuck searched for potential sources of information that might have shaped Meta's AI but came up empty. On Wednesday, according to checks by NBC News, Meta's chatbot declined to talk about Starbuck at all, responding to questions about him with: "Sorry, I can't help you with this request right now. Is there anything else I can help you with?" So-called hallucinations, in which AI chatbots give unexpected and incorrect responses to questions, are a notorious and somewhat mysterious feature of AI software. Starbuck filed his lawsuit at an especially inconvenient moment for Meta's ambitious AI plans. Tuesday was LlamaCon, a conference for AI developers hosted by Meta at its corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Zuckerberg gave a keynote address, and the company announced several updates to its AI model, called Llama, which competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and others. Kaplan is also at the center of several allegations of misconduct in a recent bestselling book by a former Facebook employee, Sarah Wynn-Williams. Meta has said the book includes "false accusations about our executives," and that an internal investigation cleared Kaplan of wrongdoing in 2017. Wynn-Williams testified about Meta's record in China before a Senate subcommittee this month, accusing Zuckerberg, whom she worked with directly, of being dishonest about his past willingness to strike compromises with the Chinese government.

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck sues Meta over AI responses about him

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. 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. "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." 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." 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. 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." 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. 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. 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." The filing alleges that Meta was unwilling to make those changes or "take meaningful responsibility for its conduct." "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. Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, responded to a video Starbuck posted to X outlining the lawsuit and called the situation "unacceptable." "This is clearly not how our AI should operate," Kaplan said on X. "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 said he is working with Meta's product team to "understand how this happened and explore potential solutions." Starbuck said that in addition to falsely saying he participated in the the riot at the U.S. Capitol, Meta AI also falsely claimed he engaged in Holocaust denial, and said he pleaded guilty to a crime despite never having been "arrested or charged with a single crime in his life." Meta later "blacklisted" Starbuck's name, he said, adding that the move did not solve the problem because Meta includes his name in news stories, which allows users to then ask for more information about him. "While I'm the target today, a candidate you like could be the next target, and lies from Meta's AI could flip votes that decide the election," Starbuck said on X. "You could be the next target too."

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck sues Meta over AI responses about him

LOS ANGELES -- 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. 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. "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." 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." 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. 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." 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. 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. 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." The filing alleges that Meta was unwilling to make those changes or "take meaningful responsibility for its conduct." "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. Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, responded to a video Starbuck posted to X outlining the lawsuit and called the situation "unacceptable." "This is clearly not how our AI should operate," Kaplan said on X. "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 said he is working with Meta's product team to "understand how this happened and explore potential solutions." Starbuck said that in addition to falsely saying he participated in the the riot at the U.S. Capitol, Meta AI also falsely claimed he engaged in Holocaust denial, and said he pleaded guilty to a crime despite never having been "arrested or charged with a single crime in his life." Meta later "blacklisted" Starbuck's name, he said, adding that the move did not solve the problem because Meta includes his name in news stories, which allows users to then ask for more information about him. "While I'm the target today, a candidate you like could be the next target, and lies from Meta's AI could flip votes that decide the election," Starbuck said on X. "You could be the next target too."

Meta executive apologizes after conservative activist Robby Starbuck sues over AI chatbot responses

A Meta executive apologized to lobbyist Robby Starbuck on behalf of the company's artificial intelligence (AI) engine spreading false information about the conservative activist known for his opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. "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," Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, wrote in a Tuesday post on the social platform X. "I'm working now with our product team to understand how this happened and explore potential solutions," he added. His statement came hours after Meta launched a stand-alone app for the AI engine powered by its Llama 4 code. The move also followed Meta's shift to looser hate speech rules and announcement it would forgo fact-checking standards while investing upward of $60 billion in AI development. Starbuck said Meta AI falsely reported that he was present at the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and inaccurately stated that he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for his actions on site amid other claims. Starbuck said he was not in Washington, D.C., at the time of the insurrection and filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit over the chatbot's disinformation. "While I'm the target today, a candidate you like could be the next target, and lies from Meta's AI could flip votes that decide the election. YOU could be the next target too," he wrote in a Tuesday post on X. "That's why I'm taking on this David vs. Goliath fight. For me, my honor, my family, for our elections, and FOR YOU," he added. A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment on the matter.

Conservative Activist Robby Starbuck Sues Meta Over AI Responses About Him

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. 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. "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." 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." 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. 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." 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. 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. 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." The filing alleges that Meta was unwilling to make those changes or "take meaningful responsibility for its conduct." "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. Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, responded to a video Starbuck posted to X outlining the lawsuit and called the situation "unacceptable." "This is clearly not how our AI should operate," Kaplan said on X. "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 said he is working with Meta's product team to "understand how this happened and explore potential solutions." Starbuck said that in addition to falsely saying he participated in the the riot at the U.S. Capitol, Meta AI also falsely claimed he engaged in Holocaust denial, and said he pleaded guilty to a crime despite never having been "arrested or charged with a single crime in his life." Meta later "blacklisted" Starbuck's name, he said, adding that the move did not solve the problem because Meta includes his name in news stories, which allows users to then ask for more information about him. "While I'm the target today, a candidate you like could be the next target, and lies from Meta's AI could flip votes that decide the election," Starbuck said on X. "You could be the next target too." Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.