Source: Bloomberg Law

A Delaware Superior Court judge denied Google’s motion to dismiss and allowed conservative activist Robby Starbuck to proceed with claims that the company’s Bard chatbot — described as a predecessor to Gemini — allegedly defamed him by generating false sexual-assault accusations, incorrectly linking him to the “notorious white supremacist” Richard Spencer, and allegedly offering arguments in favor of his execution. Judge Meghan A. Adams characterized the dispute as opening “a new frontier for defamation law, in which artificial intelligence tools are allegedly employed to effectuate the defamatory ends of their makers,” but said the initial stages of the litigation will rely on ordinary defamation precedents.

The 36-page ruling acknowledged novel issues raised by the lawsuit, including Starbuck’s allegation that Google deliberately engineered bias into its AI model — an assertion he says he obtained from the chatbot itself — and the court declined, at this early stage and without discovery, to reject the possibility that an AI tool could “review and understand its own programming.” Starbuck previously sued a Meta chatbot and later dropped that case; his Google suit was filed in October. The opinion notes Delaware’s role as a venue for politically charged defamation litigation and references contemporaneous high-profile suits in the same court. Starbuck is represented by Shaw Keller LLP, Baughman Law, and Dhillon Law Group Inc.; Google is represented by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC. The case is captioned Starbuck v. Google LLC, Del. Super. Ct., No. N25-C-10-211, 7/24/26.