Description: Conservative activist Robby Starbuck reportedly filed a defamation lawsuit against Google, alleging its Bard, Gemini, and Gemma AI systems generated false statements linking him to sexual assault and extremist activity. Starbuck claims the outputs caused reputational harm and sought over $15 million in damages. Google acknowledged the hallucinations as known LLM behavior and stated it works to minimize such inaccuracies. See also Incident 1247.
Editor Notes: Timeline notes: The earliest reported instances of purportedly false outputs appear to have occurred in 2023, with additional alleged misstatements by Google's AI systems reported in 2025. This incident ID uses 10/22/2025, which is the publication date of The Wall Street Journal report, as the incident date.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Google , Google Bard , Gemma AI and Gemini developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Robby Starbuck and Epistemic integrity.
Incident Stats
Risk Subdomain
A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
3.1. False or misleading information
Risk Domain
The Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental harms, and (7) AI system safety, failures & limitations.
- Misinformation
Entity
Which, if any, entity is presented as the main cause of the risk
AI
Timing
The stage in the AI lifecycle at which the risk is presented as occurring
Post-deployment
Intent
Whether the risk is presented as occurring as an expected or unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Unintentional
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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Conservative activist Robby Starbuck filed a defamation lawsuit against Google alleging its artificial-intelligence tools falsely connected Starbuck to sexual-assault claims and to a white nationalist.
Starbuck said he became aware of the i…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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