• Celebrities rarely sue if their AI-generated images are used in fraudulent online ads.
• An exception is Mike Huckabee’s lawsuit over fake CBD gum ads on Facebook.
• “We will go as far as we can,” he told BI about his lawsuit against Meta.

When celebrities commit fraud, they don’t tend to rush to the nearest courthouse to sue Facebook or YouTube.

Oprah Winfrey did not sue after her AI twin committed a fraud earlier this year. $37 personal development course Based on “missing” Bible verses. So is Taylor Smith. after his recent deepfake “endorsement” of Donald Trump.

While he dueled deepfakes of Tom Hanks over a dental plan last October and a miracle cure in August, the real Tom Hanks did not sue anyone. Similarly, Jennifer Aniston, the AI ​​duo who recently told Facebook users that she owes her immortal bikini body to collagen supplements, didn’t rush to the courthouse.

Amid this litigation constraint, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee stands apart.

He was also targeted. In May, Huckabee, a Baptist minister and staunch conservative, discovered that his manipulated image had been used in Facebook ads for CBD gummies for months.

“CBD cured me and can save American lives,” the two-time GOP presidential candidate says in the ads.

“It was pretty shocking,” Huckabee told Business Insider on Wednesday. “I was just angry.”

Huckabee may now be the only person who has taken his anger to court, a figure of false American public opinion.

His lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, seeks unspecified damages “for their malicious conduct.”

“Meta profited from these illegal ads, and thanks to Meta’s approval, these ads reached millions of Facebook users,” the lawsuit states. The claim is included.

An attorney and spokesperson for Meta did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

The company is fighting to dismiss the lawsuit in an effort focused on Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act. Since 1996, Section 230 has generally exempted publishers of third-party content from lawsuits.

Digital law experts told Business Insider that Section 230 protections make it nearly impossible to successfully sue a social media platform for deepfake scam ads.

So, while public figures are subject to deepfakes all the time, Huckabee v Meta, filed in federal court in Delaware, is an unsurprisingly rare effort, they said.

“He goes straight for the teeth with an impressive track record of courtroom futility,” said Eric Goldman, a digital law professor at Santa Clara University.

Huckabee said he remains determined.

“There are so many people who get scammed this way that they either don’t have the energy to pursue it or they think it’s a futile effort, which I disagree with,” he said.

“Obviously it’s kind of a Wild, Wild West approach, that they can do anything they want to do and no one can touch them,” he added, referring to Meta. “I think it’s time to touch them.”

Facebook is an “advertising company”

Huckabee’s attorney, Scott Poynter, said he knows of a case similar to the former governor’s and that the progress gives him hope.

Three years ago in federal court in California, Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest filed a lawsuit with a similar claim. The billionaire claimed Meta was negligent in publishing deepfake cryptocurrency scam ads using his image. His lawsuit alleged that despite Forrest’s repeated requests for the ads to be removed, the ads continued to run on Facebook and Instagram, defrauding victims of millions of dollars.

In June, U.S. District Court Judge P. Casey Pitts rejected Meta’s argument that the case should be denied a preliminary hearing on Section 230 grounds. The decision means Forrest can go to court over the claim that Meta is more than a neutral content carrier and is therefore not immune to a negligence claim.

That’s Huckabee’s claim in a nutshell, Poynter said.

“Facebook is an advertising company,” he told BI. “Nearly 98% of Meta’s $134 billion in revenue last year came from selling ads. Meta’s algorithm decides how many of those ads are sent and who sees them.”

“We argue that Meta is no longer a third-party content provider protected by 230 immunity when it manipulates an ad through its own algorithm and delivers it to the people most likely to purchase.”

Goldman, the digital law professor, thinks the Forrest decision may be “an anomaly.”

“If I were Facebook, I would object,” he said.

Still, he said there were warning signs that 230 immunity were in legal jeopardy.

he pointed out Anderson/TikTokA lawsuit filed on behalf of 10-year-old Nylah Anderson, a girl who died while trying the “Blackout Challenge” promoted on her TikTok feed.

In August, a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania found that TikTok served as more than a neutral repository of third-party content because its algorithm pushed those videos to the girl. The court rejected TikTok’s 230 objections and allowed the case to proceed.

“They found that the algorithms were content protected by the First Amendment, so they were not covered by 230 immunity,” Goldman said.

“This is clearly wrong and will perhaps be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court,” he added. “And if it works, it means the end of 230 protection” for social media platforms.

‘What’s going on?’

Mike Huckabee doesn’t remember the exact moment in May when he noticed his doppelgänger was selling CBD gummies. He just remembers being “furious.”

“I had a few friends send it to me,” he recalled. “And ‘What’s going on?’ they were saying.”

The ads used photos of the former governor, including those from his national talk and variety show “Huckabee,” which airs weekly on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Other photos were clearly manipulated by artificial intelligence, his lawsuit states.

“There’s no real photo of me like that. It looks like I’m crying,” Huckabee told BI. “I’m wearing a bright red patterned shirt and it’s like I’m on my game.”

The lawsuit alleges that at least one of the ads was in the form of a Fox News report. All the ads said Huckabee left Trinity Broadcasting because he nearly died after a four-year battle with an autoimmune disease, but the “miracle” of Fortin brand CBD gummies saved his life.

The ads also claimed that since he had switched to gummies, he no longer needed to take opioid painkillers.

Fortin is still selling CBD gummies online without a fake Huckabee endorsement. The company is not named as a defendant in Huckabee’s lawsuit, and a representative did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Huckabee said he was soon inundated with calls from friends, fans, network contacts and show sponsors, all wondering if he was really sick, if he had really quit smoking and if he had really popped CBD gummies.

“Governor Huckabee does not approve CBD gummies or any marijuana derivative,” Poynter told BI. “For decades, Governor Huckabee has been against marijuana and its derivatives.”

The former governor said he has more than 2 million followers on Facebook and has had fights with Meta before, including having his account temporarily suspended after he criticized the government’s Covid-19 response.

“Everyone I knew was in Facebook jail,” he said. “If they’re watching content from people who don’t have that much content, why can’t they see these ads?”

Huckabee said he’s not a fan of Section 230 immunity. The law was passed to encourage the growth of the internet and protect freedom of expression, but “I don’t think we need to worry about that anymore,” he said.

“We need to worry about what kind of monster the internet is turning into and wiping out people’s lives,” he added.

As for his case, Huckabee said, “We’re going to take this as far as we can.”

Meta is expected to file additional documents Monday supporting his request to dismiss the Huckabee case.

In the Forrest case, the company continues to claim that it has meaningful measures to combat fraudulent advertising.