{"id":270372,"date":"2025-11-18T20:54:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T20:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/270372\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T20:54:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T20:54:17","slug":"ai-accused-me-of-killing-three-women-now-im-suing-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/270372\/","title":{"rendered":"AI accused me of killing three women. Now I\u2019m suing Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the redemption story that became his calling card, a convicted drug dealer named James Keene agreed to work for the FBI as an undercover informant in a psychiatric jail, tasked with befriending a suspected serial killer named Larry Hall.<\/p>\n

Keene was credited with gathering crucial evidence that ensured Hall was denied parole. In return Keene was released early from prison and his story was eventually told in several books and the Apple TV miniseries Black Bird.<\/p>\n

But over the summer, Keene learned that another version of events was apparently being generated by an AI bot that posts summaries of search results on Google.<\/p>\n

The bot declared that Keene was \u201cserving a life sentence without parole for multiple murders\u201d, Keene complains, in a lawsuit. It suggested he was responsible for killing three women, his suit alleges.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Sign up for The Times\u2019s weekly US newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMr Keene has a past history but his history is what makes him such a remarkable character,\u201d said his lawyer, Paul Chawla. \u201cWhat\u2019s happening with AI is devastating.\u201d An artificial intelligence bot had called him \u201ceverything from a murderer to a rapist to a terrorist\u201d, Chawla said.<\/p>\n

In Keene\u2019s first complaint to the company earlier this year, he said: \u201cThis is all evil twisted lies Google and it is coming from you in one sense or another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Taron<\/p>\n

Taron Egerton starred as Keene in Black Bird, released in 2022<\/p>\n

APPLE TV<\/p>\n

\"Mugshot<\/p>\n

Larry Hall, the serial killer who Keene was instructed to collect information on<\/p>\n

Keene\u2019s lawsuit is one of at least six complaints that have been filed so far in the US by Americans who say they have been defamed by AI, according to the Stanford law professor Eugene Volokh. The alleged libels have been attributed to an occasional tendency by AI large language models to suffer \u201challucination\u201d: veering into fiction and sometimes generating false sources to back up what they are saying.<\/p>\n

This tendency, recalling the title of the Philip K Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is not quite a bug in the systems, said Volokh, who also trained as a computer programmer. \u201cA typical bug is, you know, I made a mistake in this line, and I fix it and then everything works,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the nature of this software is not \u2026 that it knows things in any normal sense of \u2018know\u2019, it\u2019s not that it reasons \u2026 these large language models take advantage of information about the frequency of words and how often they [occur] and how one follows another in certain contexts,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The astonishing thing, he said, is that most of the time it is \u201cpretty accurate\u201d \u2014 but \u201cthere\u2019s no particular reason to think that the results are going to be accurate all the time\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Google\u2019s AI overviews are hallucinating \u2014 and it\u2019s getting worse<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the first libel suits was filed by a radio DJ named Mark Walters, who complained that the OpenAI bot ChatGPT was accusing him of embezzlement. A judge dismissed the complaint, concluding that the false statement had been made by the bot to a journalist who did not believe it.<\/p>\n

In Maryland, a plaintiff named Jeremy Battle claims Microsoft\u2019s AI bot has allegedly labelled him a terrorist who had been \u201clevying war against the United States\u201d. A judge has paused the case, ordering that the parties attempt to resolve it using Microsoft\u2019s own arbitration mechanism.<\/p>\n

Another suit was filed by a conservative activist named Robby Starbuck, who alleges a Meta chatbot had falsely claimed he was involved in the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Meta settled the suit. Starbuck made similar claims against Google in a state court in Delaware. In a filing on Monday, Google suggested that Starbuck had purposefully sought to cause its AI tools to \u201challucinate\u201d, generating false statements about him. Starbuck\u2019s lawyer called the response \u201cvictim blaming\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Robby<\/p>\n

Robby Starbuck made claims against Meta and Google<\/p>\n

Perhaps the strongest of all the AI libel lawsuits has been filed by a renewable energy company in Minnesota called Wolf River Electric, which installs solar panels on homes and businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe noticed a sudden rocketing in cancellation rates towards the last quarter of 2024,\u201d said Nick Kasprowicz, the company\u2019s general counsel. Typically about 3 per cent of their customers had cancelled contracts, he said. This had now risen to 47 per cent. When they attempted to ask people why they were cancelling \u201cwe started getting screenshots of these AI overviews\u201d, he alleged. These claimed that the company faced a lawsuit from the Minnesota attorney-general and allegations of \u201cdeceptive sales practices\u201d.<\/p>\n

The AI summary appeared on the top of Google\u2019s search page and provided several links to websites that did not back up the assertions, Kasprowicz said. It also generated false claims about the leaders of the company, he added.<\/p>\n

One AI summary said Jonathan Latcham, Wolf River Electric\u2019s chief financial officer (CFO), was accused of fraud, of engaging in \u201chigh-pressure sales tactics\u201d and of failing \u201cto disclose crucial information to customers\u201d.<\/p>\n

Latcham felt it was a particularly damaging allegation to make against a certified public accountant. \u201cThat\u2019s my career and reputation that I\u2019ve spent 13 years building,\u201d he said. \u201cSo many people read that first and they take it for granted that that\u2019s true information.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIf a customer sees that, they\u2019re like: \u2018Oh, the CFO is promoting these things? These guys are a bunch of dirtbags.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Justin Nielsen, one of the founders of the company that now employs more than 200 people, said he was one of \u201cthree guys that started this from literally a basement\u201d. They relied on word of mouth, he said. \u201cWe put our entire lives into Wolf River, into developing a trustworthy, reputable household name.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are about a million Google searches for the company each year, Kasprowicz said. He added that it appeared that many people typing the name Wolf River Electric into a Google search box received a prompt that suggested they search for a lawsuit, or legal action.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe we\u2019ve had approximately $100 million in cancelled contracts,\u201d he said. If Google was simply linking to newspaper articles that made the claims, they would be protected from libel suits under an act of Congress known as Section 230. \u201cBut in these instances Google is truly the author of these defamatory statements,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping for some kind of accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Luka<\/p>\n

Justin Nielsen, right, with other executives of Wolf River Electric<\/p>\n

TIM GRUBER\/THE NEW YORK TIMES\/REDUX\/EYEVINE<\/p>\n

Google is contesting the suit. A spokesman for the company said that \u201cthe vast majority of our AI Overviews are accurate and helpful but like with any new technology, mistakes can happen. As soon as we found out about the problem, we acted quickly to fix it\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the case of Keene, the one-time prisoner who became an undercover FBI informant, the company argues that a \u201creasonable user\u201d of its search tools would note \u201cGoogle\u2019s own warnings about AI-generated responses\u201d and suspect that he was not actually serving a life sentence without parole.<\/p>\n

He is a public figure, as a \u201cself-described celebrity, American author, television executive producer and former FBI operative\u201d who should therefore expect to be a subject of debate and commentary, Google says. He must show that Google acted with malice, it says, arguing that his suit fails to do so.<\/p>\n

In Keene\u2019s initial complaint to Google, via emails he sent in May, he appears to grapple with the challenge of who precisely is making the false statements against him. \u201cYour Google AI just makes things up completely that are not true!\u201d he wrote. \u201cI am not serving life in prison without parole! I have never had any of my assets confiscated!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Can AI be made trustworthy? Alexa inventor may have the answer<\/a><\/p>\n

Volokh, the law professor who tracks AI-related suits, said companies generally take steps to halt \u201challucinations\u201d once they are identified. \u201cNow, sometimes the steps are very broad,\u201d he said. In some cases, the response appeared to be: \u201cLet\u2019s just say nothing at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, said he suffered this fate after ChatGPT falsely accused him of making inappropriate comments to a student during a field trip to Alaska. Apart from anything else, \u201cI have never taken students on any field trips,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was also chilling was the response,\u201d he said. \u201cI had people who reported to me that ChatGPT says I don\u2019t exist,\u201d he said. \u201cIn some ways this is more chilling than the original mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

The message from AI companies, he believes, was \u201cyou allow us to defame you or we will ghost you\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the redemption story that became his calling card, a convicted drug dealer named James Keene agreed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-270372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}