Repeat off

1

Repeat one

all

Repeat all

Mark Zuckerberg taps anti-LGBTQ+ activist to advise Meta on AI “bias”
Photo #6555 August 18 2025, 08:15

Right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ activist Robby Starbuck is serving as an advisor to Meta to address “ideological and political bias” in the company’s AI chatbot, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The hire comes as part of a settlement that Meta reached with Starbuck earlier this year. The conservative activist, who’s made a career out of pressuring corporations to drop diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, including those addressing the LGBTQ+ community, filed a lawsuit in April claiming Meta AI falsely stated he was involved in the January 6th Capitol insurrection.

Related

This rightwing activist gets major brands to turn their backs on diversity. How is he doing it?

According to the lawsuit, a Harley-Davidson dealer published a screenshot from Meta’s AI chatbot linking Starbuck to both the Capitol riot and QAnon. Starbuck denies any association with either.

“Since engaging on these important issues with Robby, Meta has made tremendous strides to improve the accuracy of Meta AI and mitigate ideological and political bias,” Meta and Starbuck said in a joint statement to the Journal.

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

Starbuck’s advisory role coincides with the president’s executive diktat last month demanding the tech industry purge itself of “woke” ideology in AI models under threat of government contracts getting pulled.

Those models have been “infused with partisan bias,” he said at a signing ceremony, including “critical race theory.” The order directs government agencies not to procure models from the industry “that sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy to ideological agendas.”

Trump’s order calls for large language models (LLMs) that are “truthful in responding to user prompts seeking factual information or analysis,” “prioritize historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity,” and are “neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI.”

The order specifically targets gay and trans identity in its expansive definition of DEI, including “the suppression or distortion of factual information about race or sex; manipulation of racial or sexual representation in model outputs; incorporation of concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality, and systemic racism; and discrimination on the basis of race or sex.”

The order demanding federal agency LLMs conform to Trump’s version of “truthfulness” could result in the president’s anti-DEI worldview infecting AI models across the industry.

Producing “accurate” and “objective” information with AI has already proved challenging in the three years since out OpenAI founder Sam Altman’s release of ChatGPT. AI that is “free of ideological bias,” according to influential founder Rumman Chowdhury of Humane Intelligence, is still “impossible to do in practice.”

Yet Meta is making a show with Starbuck’s hire that Trump’s version of “ideological and political bias” is being addressed.

Last year, Starbuck convinced Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniel’s parent company Brown-Forman, Ford Motor Co., Lowe’s, Tractor Supply Co., John Deere, large-equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc., and beverage maker Molson Coors to drop public-facing DEI efforts, including cutting ties with the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which tracks LGBTQ+ hires.

Starbuck called those corporate decisions “a massive win for sanity.”

In a statement to LGBTQ Nation in September, after Starbuck threatened a boycott of the company to rival the fallout from Bud Light’s disastrous association with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, Molson Coors described dropping their DEI efforts as one of “the next steps of our culture journey.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has assiduously courted Trump in recent years, after banning him from Facebook and Instagram following the January 6 riots at the Capitol. He called Trump a “badass” after an attempt on his life last summer on the campaign trail, visited Mar-a-Lago numerous times, donated large sums to his presidential library, and dropped fact-checking on Meta’s platforms with Trump’s encouragement.

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.


Comments (0)