Conservative activist Robby Starbuck is suing Facebook’s parent company, Meta, claiming its artificial intelligence chatbot defamed him by falsely claiming he is a “white nationalist;” that he was arrested on Jan. 6, 2021, during the Capitol Hill protest of Congress certifying the 2020 presidential election; and that he had been sued for defamation.
“One of the biggest companies on the face of the earth has engaged in a blatant pattern of defamation against me where they framed me as a criminal who pled guilty to a crime and engaged in Holocaust denial. None of it is even remotely true,” Starbuck told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday. “It’s a fiction created by Meta’s malicious AI.”
Starbuck, a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Capital Markets Initiative who has successfully pressured many companies to reject “woke” diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, said he notified Meta of the defamation and the company did not adequately address it.
“Even after being notified of this harmful defamation, Meta continued to assassinate my character,” he said. “If this malicious behavior isn’t fixed, other people will be victimized by Meta’s defamatory AI.”
Starbuck filed the suit in Delaware Superior Court on Tuesday, alleging one count of defamation. The lawsuit seeks an estimated $5 million in compensatory damages and more in “exemplary and punitive damages,” along with an injunction requiring the company to ensure the AI program does not republish the false claims.
“As part of our continuous effort to improve our models, we have already released updates and will continue to do so,” a Meta spokesperson told The Daily Signal.
Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, publicly apologized on X, calling the AI errors “unacceptable.”
“This is clearly not how our AI should operate,” he wrote. “We’re sorry for the results it shared about you and that the fix we put in place didn’t address the underlying problem. I’m working now with our product team to understand how this happened and explore potential solutions.”
The Timeline
Starbuck said he first saw the AI claims when he reached out to Harley-Davidson in August to encourage the company to reject its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. A Harley-Davidson dealer in Vermont, who ostensibly took umbrage at Starbuck’s opposition to DEI, responded with a screenshot of Meta’s AI claiming that Starbuck had been at the Jan. 6 Capitol protest and linked to QAnon, a conspiracy theory based on cryptic postings by an anonymous alleged government insider.
Starbuck had been in Tennessee on Jan. 6, and he never faced charges related to Capitol protest, despite the Meta AI claims.
He listed other false claims, including that he had denied the Holocaust, that he had appeared on a white nationalist show, and that he had been sued for defamation and emotional distress, among other things.
According to the lawsuit, Starbuck “did everything within his power to alert Meta about the error and enlist its help to address the problem.” He contacted the company’s executives and legal counsel.
“Meta was unwilling to implement these changes or take meaningful responsibility for its conduct,” the lawsuit states. Months after he reached out, the company wiped Starbuck’s name from its chatbot’s written responses. Despite this “fix,” Meta’s data retained the original false claims.
In April 2025, Starbuck learned that Meta’s AI voice feature claimed he had “pled guilty over disorderly conduct” for the Jan. 6 Capitol protest and that he had “advanced Holocaust denialism.”
The AI voice said that Starbuck poses “a significant threat to his children’s wellbeing” and that “authorities should consider removing parental rights to protect them.”
The lawsuit claims the AI lies have “caused immeasurable damage” to Starbuck, from reputational harm to death threats.
In January, a Georgia judge allowed a defamation lawsuit against another artificial intelligence chatbot creator, OpenAI, to proceed to discovery, denying the ChatGPT maker’s motion to dismiss, the Wall Street Journal reported. Conservative talk radio host Mark Walters had claimed ChatGPT falsely said he faced a lawsuit accusing him of embezzling funds from a gun rights group.
In court arguments earlier this month, OpenAI emphasized that it often warns users about the potential accuracy of ChatGPT inputs and claimed Walters never alerted the company about the alleged error or sought a retraction.
Future Potential AI Harms
Starbuck told The Daily Signal that his case represents an opportunity to protect others from wide-ranging harms.
“In the future where this isn’t fixed, people will be denied mortgages, lose custody, or lose work because other people believe these sorts of lies from irresponsible AI. That’s just unacceptable,” he said. “These lies have brought enormous harm to not only my reputation but to the safety of my wife and my kids.”
Starbuck said preventing these harms motivates him to take “on this David vs. Goliath fight and risking a lot of money to defend my reputation from the malicious lies that Meta has been spreading about me.”
“This nightmare simply cannot continue, and Meta must be stopped before they harm other people the same way,” he explained. “If Meta seeks a settlement in this egregious case, they better be ready to make long term changes to protect everyone from defamation by their AI.”
“This case is a line in the sand that says AI must have guardrails to stop it from committing character assassination. Period,” Starbuck added. “I hope that Mark Zuckerberg and the other Meta executives examine their souls, their minds, and conscience to fix this for the sake of all of our children. They deserve better.”
