Google Ordered to Defend Robby Starbuck’s AI Defamation Suit (1)

Why it matters

A Delaware judge has allowed Robby Starbuck's defamation lawsuit against Google to proceed over outputs from Bard, an earlier model now succeeded by Gemini. Starbuck alleges the chatbot falsely accused him of sexual assault, wrongly associated him with white supremacist Richard Spencer, and even generated arguments supporting his execution. Judge Meghan A. Adams acknowledged the case opens a new frontier for defamation law involving artificial intelligence tools, but she said the early stages of the litigation rest on established defamation precedent, deferring the novel AI questions for later. Notably, Adams declined to dismiss Starbuck's claim that Google deliberately engineered bias against him into the model, an idea he says came from the chatbot itself, reasoning that it is too early to rule out the possibility that the tool can review its own programming. The ruling adds to a growing body of decisions as courts and policymakers confront the consequences of AI across law, business, and society.