Robby Starbuck, the Tennessee-based conservative filmmaker and activist, announced on Friday that he settled his lawsuit against Meta Platforms, Inc., the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which was filed after its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot made a series of false claims about him.
Starbuck announced the lawsuit in May, when he posted a video showing Meta AI claim he was convicted of a crime related to the protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and that he filmed the inside of the building while at the Capitol. The filmmaker revealed that he was not in Washington, D.C. on that day, and never faced any such charges.
His video also showed the company’s AI falsely claim that Starbuck was a white nationalist who denied the Holocaust, and suggested his children should be taken from him in order to protect them from his influence.
Starbuck wrote in a post to the social media platform X that his lawsuit prompted an immediate response from the company, leading to an agreement that satisfied both parties.
“When I filed my defamation suit, Meta reached out to me immediately, which led to many very long calls with concerned executives and engineers,” wrote Starbuck. “These calls went beyond fixing what happened to me as we all saw the larger picture of addressing this issue across the entire AI industry.”
In a statement, Starbuck credited Meta for “tremendous strides to improve the accuracy of Meta AI and mitigate ideological and political bias,” and said he would continue working with the company “to find ways to address issues of ideological and political bias and minimize the risk that the model returns hallucinations to user queries.”
As many of you know, I sued Meta early this year due to chatbot responses about me that were 100% false. Today @Meta and I are announcing an amicable resolution to my lawsuit. Let me give you some details…
When I filed my defamation suit, Meta reached out to me immediately,… pic.twitter.com/b3W1rVT4d2
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) August 8, 2025
Meta AI was built using the open-source Llama 4 model, and the technology website Collabnix explained it is most suitable for lightweight applications, as seen on Facebook. Technologically, the website explains it is comparable to, albeit less advanced than, the GPT4-0 product from the company OpenAI.
This likely makes Meta AI somewhat less technologically advanced than the xAI chatbot, Grok, which the website noted ranked first in mathematical computing and ranked higher than Llama 4 in most fields.
In his post to social media, Starbuck indicated he considered the settlement a victory.
“Delivering fairness for consumers is the outcome I’ve always wanted and I’m pleased to do the work to make that a reality,” wrote Starbuck. “This is all I’ll say for now but expect another update in video form after we complete our work!”
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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 “Robby Starbuck” by Robby Starbuck.
