Mike Huckabee is the unlikely avenger of deep-faked celebrities

When celebrities get deep-faked, they don’t tend to run off to the nearest courthouse to sue Facebook or YouTube.

Oprah Winfrey did not file a lawsuit earlier this year after her AI doppelganger hawked a $37 self-help course based on “missing” Bible scriptures. Neither did Taylor Smith, after her recent deepfaked “endorsement” of Donald Trump.

When dueling deepfakes of Tom Hanks shilled for a dental plan last October and a miracle cure in August, the real Tom Hanks sued no one. Likewise, Jennifer Aniston, whose AI double recently told Facebook users that she owes her timeless bikini body to collagen supplements, did not run to the courthouse.

Amid this litigation restraint, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee stands apart.

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

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

“It was quite the shock,” Huckabee told B-17 Wednesday. “I was just outraged.”

Huckabee may now be the only deepfaked American public figure who is taking his outrage to court.

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

“Meta profited from these unlawful advertisements, and because of Meta’s approval, these advertisements reached millions of Facebook users,” the lawsuit alleges.

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

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

Experts in digital law told B-17 that Section 230 protections make it virtually impossible to successfully sue a social media platform over deepfake scam ads.

So while public figures get deepfaked all the time, Huckabee v Meta, filed in federal court in Delaware, is unsurprisingly a rare effort, they said.

“He’s going straight into the teeth of an impressive record of courtroom futility,” said Eric Goldman, a professor of digital law at Santa Clara University.

Huckabee said he remains determined.

“There are so many people who have been defrauded in this way, and either they don’t have the energy to pursue it, or they think it’s an effort in futility, which I disagree with,” he said.

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

Attorney Scott Poynter, left, and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee after taping the October 12 episode of the Trinity Broadcasting Network talk show, “Huckabee.”

Facebook is “an advertising company”

Huckabee’s lawyer, Scott Poynter, said he knows of one lawsuit that’s similar to the former governor’s, and he said its progress has given him hope.

Three years ago, in federal court in California, Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest filed a lawsuit making a similar claim. The billionaire alleged that Meta was negligent in posting deepfake cryptocurrency scam ads using his image. The ads remained up on Facebook and Instagram despite Forrest’s repeated demands they be taken down, and defrauded victims out of millions of dollars, his suit alleges.

In June, US District Court Judge P. Casey Pitts rejected Meta’s argument that the case should be dismissed pretrial on Section 230 grounds. The decision means Forrest may proceed to trial on this claim: that Meta was more than just a neutral conveyor of content and, therefore, has no immunity from a negligence claim.

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

“Facebook is an advertising company,” he told B-17. “Almost 98% of Meta’s $134 billion in revenue last year came from the sale of advertisements. Its algorithm decides how many of these ads will be sent out, and who will see them.”

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

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

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

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

He pointed to Anderson v. TikTok, a lawsuit on behalf of a 10-year-old girl, Nylah Anderson, who died trying the “Blackout Challenge” promoted on her TikTok feed.

In August, a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania found that because its algorithm fed these videos to the girl, TikTok served as more than just a neutral repository of third-party content. The court rejected TikTok’s 230 challenge, allowing the case to go forward.

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

“It’s obviously wrong, and it will be appealed, maybe to the US Supreme Court,” he added. “And if it works, it’s the end of 230 protection” for social media platforms.

A false Facebook ad, since taken down, in which former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee “endorses” CBD gummies. 

‘What the heck is going on?’

Mike Huckabee can’t remember the precise moment in May when he realized his doppelganger was selling CBD gummies. He just remembers he was “livid.”

“I was getting a number of friends who were sending it to me,” he remembered. “And they were saying ‘What the heck is going on?'”

The ads used photos of the former governor, including from his nationally syndicated talk and variety show, “Huckabee,” which runs weekly on Trinity Broadcasting Network. Other photos were clearly AI-manipulated, his lawsuit says.

“There is no real photo of me like it. It looks like I’m crying,” Huckabee told B-17. “I’m in a bright red paisley shirt, and it looks like I’m at the end of my rope.”

At least one of the ads took the form of a Fox News story, the lawsuit alleges. All of the ads falsely said Huckabee was leaving Trinity Broadcasting because he had nearly died after a four-year battle against an auto-immune disease — but that the “miracle” of Fortin-brand CBD gummies had saved his life.

The ads also falsely claimed that because he’d switched to gummies, he no longer needed to take opioid painkillers.

Fortin is still selling CBD gummies online without the help of a bogus 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, people from the network, and sponsors from the show, all wondering if he was really sick, really quitting, and really popping CBD gummies.

“Governor Huckabee does not endorse CBD gummies or any marijuana derivative,” Poynter told B-17. “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 beef with Meta before, including when it temporarily froze his account after he criticized the government’s COVID response.

“Everybody I know has been Facebook jail,” he said. “If they’re monitoring the content of people who don’t have that much content, why can’t they see these ads?”

Huckabee said he is no fan of Section 230 immunity. The law was enacted to encourage the growth of the internet and protect free speech, but “I don’t think we have to worry about that now,” he said.

“We have to worry about how the internet has become a monster and it’s gobbling up people’s lives,” he added.

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

Meta is due to file additional papers supporting its motion to dismiss the Huckabee lawsuit on Monday.

In the Forrest case, the company continues to argue that it has meaningful safeguards in place to combat scam advertisements.