The billionaire suing Facebook to remove his face from AI scams

Like American financiers such as Bill Ackman, Andrew Forrest says he has spent years trying to get Facebook-parent Meta Platforms to do more to stop scam advertisements that use his likeness to promote fraudulent investment schemes.

Yet unlike other Meta adversaries, the mining executive has pledged to spend vast sums on his legal campaign. His U.S. federal lawsuit against Meta alleges that the company’s artificial intelligence-powered ad systems help create and amplify the false ads. 

It is one of the first cases in years that appears on track to break through broad immunity protections afforded to technology companies that host user-generated content. Last month, a federal judge rejected Meta’s efforts to dismiss the suit. The company has appealed.

The protections have withstood numerous court challenges in recent years, and legal experts say the case is one of the first where AI has played a role in litigation related to the 1996 law, often referred to as Section 230.

Forrest has said he doesn’t care what it costs and promises to see the fight to its conclusion, believing that Meta must be forced to do more to police its platform.

“I cannot believe a board of directors of any company would knowingly allow innocent, vulnerable people to lose their life savings to enhance their own corporate profits," Forrest said.

Meta didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Fraudulent celebrity ads have proliferated on social media in recent years, with X and Snapchat seeing crypto scams on their platforms, according to cybersecurity and blockchain researchers. The scams on Meta apps use ads to lure victims into joining chat groups on WhatsApp or elsewhere that steer them toward dubious investments. The schemes have cost small investors millions of dollars.

Eric Goldman, a law professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, said he was surprised by the judge’s ruling in the Forrest case given that a judge ruled in 2009 that Google wasn’t liable for ads that promoted scam ringtones.

An important facet of Forrest’s case is whether the courts will view content that is AI-generated as originating from the user giving inputs—a scammer in this case—or Meta’s model. In 2009, the judge said the plaintiff had to establish Google’s involvement in “creating or developing" the words used in the ads.

Meta and other platforms have long successfully defended against attacks on Section 230, but the companies are facing pressure on a number of fronts seeking to hold them liable for certain user content. A shareholder lawsuit was filed this year by investment firms that claim Meta failed to protect users from human trafficking and child sexual exploitation.

Between 2018 and 2019, three Jane Does sued Facebook in Texas courts, alleging they were lured into sex trafficking as minors by men who connected with them on Instagram and Facebook. In 2021, Texas’ Supreme Court dismissed the claims of negligence and product liability, maintaining that they fell under Section 230. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2022.

Forrest, whose net worth is about $14 billion, has spent more than $5 million on legal fees so far. The second-richest man in Australia, who accumulated his wealth running an iron-ore mining company, is widely seen in the country as an aggressive business executive who doesn’t shy away from drawn-out legal battles. 

His company, Fortescue Metals Group, has for years been embroiled in a conflict with Australia’s indigenous Yindjibarndi people, who allege that Fortescue failed to compensate native peoples for land usage, an assertion the company denies.

Forrest first approached Facebook about the fake profiles in 2014 when his private security team flagged the issue.

Executives at the time directed him to create an official account so the company had a reference point to compare the fake accounts against. Despite doing so, fake profiles kept appearing on the platform.

Frustrated by what he saw as Meta’s inaction, Forrest decided to sink more resources into the fight.

Around 2019, he created a mission-control-style room with four to seven cybersecurity professionals in Perth, Australia, who scour Meta platforms for fake profiles and advertisements featuring his likeness and report them to the company. 

The cyber monitoring center is staffed around the clock, and each staffer has two monitors. The front of the room features four 8-foot-by-4-foot screens that scan through Meta sites and chat rooms. He has spent $10 million running the team so far.

The fake ads use Forrest’s name and image to lure users who click on them into private chat rooms. “Check This Before the Banksters Make Their Next Move—Andrew Forrest Says," one of the Facebook ads referenced in the lawsuit says.

The billionaire also engaged Australian authorities, sending members of his private security team to work with Australian Federal Police to track down the international crime syndicates alleged to be behind the advertisements.

One of Forrest’s main assertions is that Meta’s AI ad tools have enabled scammers to create and distribute false advertisements at scale. Facebook rolled out new tools in October allowing select advertisers to generate multiple versions of text if given a string of original copy. 

The company announced in May that enhanced generative-AI ad features would allow advertisers to create image variations based on user prompts.

His lawyer, Simon Clarke, said that the number of false advertisements surges whenever Forrest’s name is in the news.

“It has been a long battle since the investment scams started in 2019. They have only increased and become more prominent with artificial intelligence," Forrest said.