Google wants Americans to believe they make honest mistakes.
But one prominent conservative discovered something far more sinister.
And a conservative activist was the victim of this sick scheme by Google.
Google’s AI nightmare just became a legal crisis
Conservative activist Robby Starbuck filed a $15 million defamation lawsuit against Google after the tech giant’s artificial intelligence systems spent two years falsely accusing him of heinous crimes he never committed.¹
The lawsuit exposes how Google’s AI chatbots – including Bard, Gemini, and Gemma – repeatedly generated fabricated allegations that Starbuck was a child rapist, serial sexual abuser, and even a shooter.²
Google’s response? They blamed "hallucinations" and suggested users somehow manipulated their system.³
But Starbuck isn’t letting them off that easy.
The smoking gun Google doesn’t want anyone to see
Starbuck discovered the nightmare in 2023 when Google’s Bard falsely linked him to white nationalist Richard Spencer.⁴
That was just the beginning.
Google’s newer AI tools invented even more disgusting lies – claiming Starbuck faced sexual assault allegations, participated in January 6, appeared in Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs, and engaged in spousal abuse.⁵
The real kicker? Google fabricated fake news articles from major outlets like Fox News, Rolling Stone, CNN, and Newsweek to make these lies look legitimate.⁶
Each fake article came with a convincing URL that looked real until someone actually clicked on it.
One fabricated headline read "Robby Starbuck Responds to Murder Accusations" – for a case supposedly from 1991 when Starbuck was two years old.⁷
"What Google has done to my reputation during this two year campaign of defamation can’t be undone," Starbuck told the New York Post.⁸
He warned Google about the problem for two full years, but they refused to fix it.⁹
The pattern that proves Google knew exactly what they were doing
This isn’t Starbuck’s first rodeo with Big Tech AI defamation.
In April 2025, Meta’s AI falsely claimed Starbuck participated in January 6.¹⁰
Meta quietly settled that lawsuit in August and hired Starbuck as an adviser on AI issues.¹¹
Google saw exactly what happened to Meta – yet their AI kept spewing the same lies about Starbuck for months afterward.
That’s the detail that blows up Google’s entire defense.
A Google spokesman told the Wall Street Journal the issues "mostly deal with claims related to hallucinations in Bard that we addressed in 2023."¹²
But if Google supposedly fixed the problem in 2023, why did their newer Gemma and Gemini systems generate fresh false allegations throughout 2025?
Google’s own admission creates a timeline that looks a lot like negligence – maybe even actual malice.
The legal weakness that could finally take down Google
Here’s what makes this lawsuit different from every failed AI defamation case before it.
No one’s won one of these cases yet.¹³
Previous plaintiffs couldn’t prove "actual malice" – that the company knew their AI was lying and didn’t care.¹⁴
A Georgia judge is letting one ChatGPT defamation case move forward, but there’s no verdict yet.¹⁵
Starbuck’s got something those other plaintiffs didn’t: proof Google knew.
He warned them repeatedly starting in 2023 that their AI was inventing criminal allegations against him.¹⁶
Google admitted the problem existed.
Then their newer AI systems generated even more false accusations anyway.
That’s not an accident. That’s a paper trail showing Google knew their AI was defaming people and let it continue.
And here’s the kicker that should terrify every Big Tech executive: Google can’t hide behind the legal shield that’s protected social media companies for decades.¹⁷
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects platforms from liability when users post harmful content.
But when Google’s AI invents lies from scratch? That’s not hosting third-party content.¹⁸
That’s Google creating the defamatory material itself.
The law doesn’t protect you from your own lies.
What happens when AI lies can get you killed
Strangers walked up to Starbuck in public who believed Google’s fake allegations.¹⁹
They’d read that he was a sexual predator, a rioter, connected to Epstein.
And they believed it because Google made it look real.
Starbuck warned this goes beyond reputation damage – it could get someone killed.²⁰
He pointed to the recent assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
When AI systems controlled by the most powerful companies on Earth start manufacturing false criminal allegations against conservatives, that’s not a glitch.
That’s a weapon.
Google wants to call it "hallucinations" and move on.²¹
But hallucinations don’t cite fake Fox News articles to make lies look credible.
Hallucinations don’t continue for two years after the company admits there’s a problem.
Hallucinations don’t target the same conservative activist who just won a settlement against Meta for the exact same thing.
"No one – regardless of political beliefs – should ever experience this," Starbuck said.²¹
He’s calling on Congress to investigate whether Google deliberately programmed political bias into their AI.²²
The timeline speaks for itself.
Google knew their AI was defaming Starbuck since 2023.
They watched Meta settle a similar case in August 2025.
And their AI kept generating new false allegations against him through October.
This case will answer the question Big Tech has dodged since they started rolling out AI: Who’s responsible when the machines lie?
Google’s betting they can get away with it.
Starbuck’s about to prove them wrong.
¹ Wall Street Journal, "Conservative Activist Robby Starbuck Sues Google for AI Defamation," October 22, 2025.
² New York Post, "Robby Starbuck sues Google after AI bot accused him of sex assault, links to white supremacist," October 22, 2025.
³ Ibid.
⁴ TipRanks, "Conservative Activist Robby Starbuck Files Defamation Lawsuit Against Google," October 22, 2025.
⁵ Mediaite, "Lawsuit Accuses Google’s AI of Fabricating News Articles That Never Existed," October 22, 2025.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ New York Post, "Robby Starbuck sues Google after AI bot accused him of sex assault, links to white supremacist," October 22, 2025.
⁹ Mediaite, "Lawsuit Accuses Google’s AI of Fabricating News Articles That Never Existed," October 22, 2025.
¹⁰ Fox Business, "Robby Starbuck settles defamation lawsuit against Meta AI chatbot," August 8, 2025.
¹¹ Ibid.
¹² PPC Land, "Activist sues Google over AI-generated false claims in second tech lawsuit," October 22, 2025.
¹³ TipRanks, "Conservative Activist Robby Starbuck Files Defamation Lawsuit Against Google," October 22, 2025.
¹⁴ Crowell & Moring, "Can AI Defame? We May Know Sooner Than You Think," 2023.
¹⁵ Ballard Spahr, "Judge Denies Motion to Dismiss AI Defamation Suit," January 2024.
¹⁶ Reason, "Conservative Activist Robby Starbuck Alleges Massive Defamation by Google AI," October 22, 2025.
¹⁷ Fortune, "Why Section 230, social media’s favorite American liability shield, may not protect Big Tech in the AI age," October 8, 2025.
¹⁸ Fordham Law News, "Prof. Chinmayi Sharma Argues Section 230’s Applicability to AI-generated Content is Unclear," October 3, 2025.
¹⁹ Mediaite, "Lawsuit Accuses Google’s AI of Fabricating News Articles That Never Existed," October 22, 2025.
²⁰ PYMNTS, "Robby Starbuck Files Defamation Lawsuit Against Google Over AI ‘Hallucinations’," October 22, 2025.
²¹ Ibid.
²² New York Sun, "Conservative Activist Robby Starbuck Sues Google For Defamation Over False Claims Generated by AI," October 22, 2025.
