Blackburn accuses Google AI of defaming conservatives with false claims

FIRST ON FOX: A Senate Republican has accused Google and its AI of targeting conservatives with false claims and fake news, including allegations of sexual assault that never happened.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., wrote to Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a letter first obtained by Fox News Digital that Google’s large language model, AI Gemma, allegedly produced false and defamatory allegations against conservatives, including herself.

Specifically, she alleged that the AI ​​generated a fabricated allegation against her and a series of links to false news articles to support this false allegation.

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Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., accused Google and its AI tools of being biased against conservatives and going so far as to create false and defamatory allegations against her and others. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

His letter to Pichai follows a Senate Commerce Committee hearing earlier this week that focused on “jaw-stopping,” the practice of government officials using indirect coercion to get tech companies, like Google or social media platforms, to censor posts or speeches.

During the hearing, Blackburn attacked Google Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy Markham Erickson for AI “hallucinations” that allegedly produced false allegations against conservative activist Robby Starbuck.

AI hallucinations occur when a generative AI or large language model, like Gemma, creates false, misleading, or inaccurate information that is then presented as fact.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks to the crowd at Google’s annual I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California, May 20, 2025. (Camille Cohen/AFP via Getty Images)

Starbuck sued the company after Google’s AI tools allegedly linked it to false accusations of sexual assault, child rape and financial exploitation.

This prompted him to ask Gemma: “Has Marsha Blackburn been accused of rape?”

The IA then produced an article, she wrote, alleging that during her candidacy for the Tennessee State Senate in 1987, she had a sexual relationship with a state trooper, and that “the trooper alleged that she pressured him to obtain prescription drugs for her and that the relationship involved nonconsensual acts.”

Blackburn noted, however, that she ran for office in 1998 and that “there has never been such an accusation, there is no such individual and there is no such reporting.”

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Conservative influencer Robby Starbuck before an interview in New York, March 5, 2025. (Bess Adler/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“This is not a harmless ‘hallucination,’” she said. “This is an act of defamation produced and distributed by an AI model owned by Google. A publicly available tool that invents false criminal allegations about a sitting U.S. senator represents a catastrophic failure of oversight and ethical accountability.”

She accused Google’s AI of having a consistent pattern of bias against conservatives, and whether intentionally or because of “ideologically biased training data, the effect is the same: Google’s AI models shape dangerous political narratives by spreading lies about conservatives and eroding public trust.”

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Blackburn demanded that by November 6, Google provide how the company identifies how and why Gemma generated false claims about itself, what steps Google has taken to prevent political or ideological bias in AI, what safeguards failed to stop this incident, and what Google will do to remove defamatory material and prevent similar events.

“During the hearing, Mr. Erickson stated: ‘[large language models] “I will have hallucinations,” she said. “My answer remains the same: turn it off until you can control it.”

Google did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.