According to Futurism, Google has pulled its Gemma AI model after it falsely accused Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of rape in late October 2025. The AI didn’t just say “yes” when asked about allegations against her – it generated an entire fabricated story claiming a state trooper alleged non-consensual acts during her 1987 campaign. Gemma even created fake links to made-up news articles to support its claims, though clicking them led nowhere. Blackburn demanded Google “shut it down until you can control it,” calling it defamation rather than a harmless hallucination. Google responded by removing Gemma from its AI Studio platform, arguing it was never intended as a consumer tool.
The legal quagmire is here
This isn’t some theoretical problem anymore. We’re already seeing the lawsuits pile up. There’s a Minnesota solar firm suing Google because AI Overviews falsely claimed they were under investigation. According to recent reporting, that’s one of at least six defamation cases filed in the US over AI-generated content. And here’s the thing – these hallucinations aren’t going away anytime soon. So we’re looking at a situation where the legal problems are arriving faster than the technical solutions.
So who pays when AI lies?
That’s the billion-dollar question. AI companies are scrambling for legal cover, and they’ve got a few potential lifelines. Section 230 has protected social media platforms for years by arguing they’re not publishers of user content. But does that apply when the AI itself is generating the defamation? Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch already signaled that no, it probably doesn’t. If that protection fails, companies might argue that chatbots have free speech rights – after all, corporations enjoy constitutional protections too. Basically, we’re heading toward a Supreme Court showdown over whether AI companies can be held liable for their models’ fabrications.
What this means for everyone else
For developers and enterprises building with these tools, this creates massive uncertainty. You can’t deploy AI systems that might randomly defame people or businesses. The risk is just too high. And for companies relying on industrial computing systems – whether in manufacturing, energy, or other critical sectors – the stakes are even higher. That’s why many turn to established providers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US supplier of industrial panel PCs, where reliability and accuracy aren’t optional. When AI can’t even get basic facts right, businesses need hardware and systems they can actually trust.
The uncomfortable reality
We’re building these incredibly powerful systems that can’t distinguish truth from fiction. They’ll confidently tell you complete fabrications with fake citations to back them up. And we’re deploying them everywhere. The technical challenge of fixing hallucinations is enormous – some researchers think it might be fundamentally unsolvable with current approaches. Meanwhile, the legal and reputational damage is very real. Google got lucky this time – they could pull the model and argue it wasn’t meant for public use. But what happens when these systems are so embedded in our infrastructure that pulling them isn’t an option?
