Conservative activist and filmmaker Robby Starbuck has filed a defamation lawsuit against Google, alleging the tech giant’s AI products repeatedly fabricated vile criminal accusations about him, including claims of sexual assault and child rape. The complaint, filed in Delaware, accuses Google’s Bard, Gemini and Gemma of inventing fake news articles and URLs to lend credibility to those fabrications. This isn’t a small snafu — it’s a direct attack on a private citizen’s reputation by a company with monopoly-sized reach.
According to the lawsuit and Starbuck’s public statements, Google’s AI didn’t just spin rumors — it concocted specific, grotesque stories linking him to murder investigations and even the Jeffrey Epstein flight logs, complete with counterfeit citations to real media outlets. Starbuck is seeking at least $15 million for the damage done to his life, family and livelihood, and he says he alerted Google about these problems as early as 2023. When an unaccountable algorithm can invent “evidence” and direct millions to it, the consequences for any American’s reputation are terrifying.
Google’s initial public posture has been to blame “hallucinations” in its models — a tech euphemism that sounds more like an excuse than accountability — and the company says it will review the complaint. That answer won’t cut it for everyday Americans whose lives can be wrecked by a few lines of machine-generated slander; pointing to technical limitations is not a remedy for ruined reputations. If Silicon Valley won’t act, the courts and Congress must step in to ensure companies bear real consequences when their tools become instruments of defamation.
This isn’t an isolated event. Starbuck earlier took legal action against Meta this year and settled, and even Senator Marsha Blackburn recently reported Gemma-generated sexual-misconduct fabrications that prompted Google to pull Gemma from public access. These patterns show a dangerous mix of broken AI systems and a corporate reflex to minimize harm rather than fix it, while conservative voices are disproportionately targeted or left holding the reputation bill. Patriots should recognize that “it can happen to Robby” means it can happen to any of us, and the stakes include who gets to be believed in the public square.
Starbuck has warned — rightly — that if we don’t stop this now, AI will become a weapon used to shape narratives, silence opponents and sway elections by inventing crimes out of thin air. This is not idle hyperbole but a sober warning about concentrated power: tech oligarchs manufacture the facts, gatekeep the platforms, and then feign helplessness when their products malign real people. Conservatives should not cede our reputations or our votes to unregulated algorithms that answer to no jury, no ballot box, and no principle of fairness.
The only responsible path forward is accountability: tougher legal standards for AI-defamation, transparency about training and source attribution, and punitive remedies when a company’s product robs an American of their good name. This lawsuit is more than one man’s fight — it’s a test of whether Americans will tolerate a future where anonymous code can invent crimes and destroy lives without consequence. If Washington won’t act, then the courts and grassroots pressure must force a reckoning with the companies that think they are above the law.
