Conservative activist Robby Starbuck has filed a defamation lawsuit against tech giant Google (GOOGL) after claiming that its AI tools falsely linked him to sexual assault allegations and white nationalism, according to the Wall Street Journal. He first noticed the issues in 2023 while using Bard, Google’s earlier chatbot, which said that he had ties to white nationalist Richard Spencer. In addition, Google’s newer AI tools, Gemini and Gemma, allegedly produced more false claims this year, which included that Starbuck was accused of sexual assault and took part in the January 6 Capitol riot.
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The lawsuit says that these tools even listed fake media sources to back up those claims. Notably, Starbuck filed the lawsuit in Delaware Superior Court and is asking for more than $15 million in damages. In response, a Google spokesperson stated that the firm would review the complaint and noted that AI tools sometimes give wrong answers, which is something Google is working to fix. The company also said that all large language models, like Bard or ChatGPT, can produce misleading outputs if prompted a certain way.
Interestingly, this is Starbuck’s second AI-related lawsuit this year. In April, he sued Meta (META) after its AI tool falsely claimed that he was part of the Capitol riot. That case ended in a quiet settlement, and with Meta hiring him as an adviser. It’s worth noting that so far, no U.S. court has awarded damages for AI-generated defamation. For instance, in May, a Georgia court ruled in favor of OpenAI, partly because the chatbot warned users about possible errors, and there was no proof of intentional harm. As a result, legal experts say that courts are still figuring out how to handle these new AI cases.
Is Google Stock a Good Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on GOOGL stock based on 29 Buys and eight Holds assigned in the past three months. Furthermore, the average GOOGL price target of $261.40 implies that shares are trading near fair value.
