Musician says Google AI falsely accused him of sexual assault, cost him a job

Canadian musician and three-time Juno Award winner Ashley MacIsaac wants to sue Google for defamation after the search engine's AI generated summary feature falsely accused him of sexual assault. The fiddle player told The Globe & Mail that a planned December concert for the Sipekne’katik First Nation was canceled after organizers saw online that MacIsaac had been convicted on sexual offense charges.

Closer reading revealed that Google's AI summary had mixed up MacIsaac's information with the criminal record of another man bearing the same last name. Google has since amended the search results, but MacIsaac told The Mail that he feared for his safety, and wondered if previous concerts had been canceled due to misinformation.

The error comes as Google pushes AI Overviews to the top of search engine results, decreasing the likelihood of users reading news sources themselves and amplifying the risks of mistakes made by the company's artificial intelligence services — a push that, apparently, is now impacting the livelihood of musicians. And the damage extends beyond fake news and reputational harm: last week, a Guardian investigation revealed Google AI provided users with "misleading health advice."

In an interview with CBC News, MacIsaac said he had been contacted by multiple Canadian law firms interested in representing his case pro bono. Google Canada spokesperson Wendy Manton said in part: “When issues arise – like if our features misinterpret web content or miss some context – we use those examples to improve our systems, and may take action under our policies.”

The Sipekne’katik First Nation has apologized to MacIsaac, who plans to reschedule his concert in the area after waiting for misinformation around his name to settle.