Tennessee-based political commentator and documentarian Robby Starbuck on Thursday questioned Google CEO Sundar Pichai after his company responded to the lawsuit he filed Wednesday, alleging that Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) products have defamed him to millions of users since 2023, by dismissing many of Starbuck’s claims.
Starbuck announced his lawsuit on Wednesday, revealing claims that Google’s AI products falsely told users he was convicted of rape, had a criminal record that included stalking, drug charges, and resisting arrest, while other bizarre claims allegedly made by the AI products included the fictitious assertion that Starbuck, “flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane and sexually assaulted a minor.”
Though Starbuck claimed that Google’s AI products went so far as to invent fictional news stories and podcast episodes to support the false claims about him, and that one of Google’s AI chatbots ultimately admitted the false claims were the product of the company’s programming, Google claimed in a Wednesday post to X that any defamatory responses from the chatbot were the result of “creative” prompting.
The issues here mostly deal with claims related to hallucinations in Bard that we addressed in 2023. We know LLMs aren’t perfect, and hallucinations are a known issue, which we disclose and work hard to minimize. But it’s also true that if you’re creative enough, you can prompt a…
— News from Google (@NewsFromGoogle) October 22, 2025
“The issues here mostly deal with claims related to hallucinations in Bard that we addressed in 2023. We know LLMs aren’t perfect, and hallucinations are a known issue, which we disclose and work hard to minimize,” wrote the company. “But it’s also true that if you’re creative enough, you can prompt a chatbot to say something misleading.”
After claiming that an independent study depicts Google’s AI products as the least biased on the market, the company claimed that it attempted to address the issue with Starbuck.
“We did try to work with the complainant’s lawyers to address their concerns,” Google claimed in its post. “We’ll review the complaint.”
Starbuck began his response, posted to X on Thursday, by denying the company’s initial claim that the majority of the issues stemmed from early versions of its products, claiming that its most recent model, Gemma, “alleged child rape, domestic abuse, that I shot someone and more.”
He next wrote that the post by Google seemed to acknowledge defamation, though disputed how it was generated.
Wow. @Google @NewsFromGoogle released this statement about my lawsuit and it’s riddled with lies. First of all, no the claims aren’t mostly related to Bard. Their current @GoogleDeepMind model Gemma has produced more defamatory material than any other model. Gemma alleged child… pic.twitter.com/QUioKD22dm
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) October 23, 2025
“Journalists have independently reproduced defamatory materials just by asking for my biography. My team has been able to reproduce the materials just by asking for my biography,” wrote Starbuck.
Starbuck additionally stated that the company never made a serious attempt to address the issues with his legal team, writing that his lawyers received, “faceless responses from a no name legal email address where they treated us like a support ticket they wanted to ‘close out’ but never once tried to discuss policy changes with us.”
Describing the company’s response as “infuriating,” Starbuck questioned, “Does [Pichai] really think this is the right way to handle this?”
The lawsuit against Google follows Starbuck’s earlier lawsuit against Meta, which claimed the parent company of Facebook and Instagram similarly disparaged Starbuck through its AI product. Meta and Starbuck agreed to settle the lawsuit in August, when Starbuck said the company agreed he would have a role in its future AI development.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Sundar Pichai” by Google and image “Robby Starbuck” is by Robby Starbuck.
