After a year of enduring what he says are false claims about him on YouTube, Bishop T.D. Jakes is asking a court to intervene. On Dec. 19, an attorney for the Dallas-area megachurch pastor filed a motion for a subpoena against Google, YouTube’s parent company. The goal is to identify owners of four YouTube accounts that churn out disparaging content falsely linking Jakes to disgraced hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs.
The motion, filed in the Northern District of California, is a groundbreaking effort to fight misinformation generated by artificial intelligence. Dustin Pusch, a lawyer for Jakes, alleges that YouTube isn’t abiding by its own community guidelines about lewd, misleading, and AI-generated content.
Videos posted about Jakes are “false and absurd,” according to the motion. It states:
These YouTubers are purportedly using the sordid and sensational allegations revolving around Sean “Diddy” Combs to attack, humiliate, degrade, and defame Bishop Jakes—and many other prominent black celebrities—with manufactured claims that he is guilty of the same crimes and other lewd and repulsive conduct as Mr. Combs. In other words, YouTubers are using Bishop Jakes’s prominence as clickbait to attract unwitting users to view their knowingly false videos for their (and possibly other foreign companies’) financial gain.
Combs, 55, is in prison awaiting trial on sex trafficking and racketeering charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
YouTube Videos Make ‘Lurid Claims’ About Jakes
In their “About” sections on YouTube, the four accounts listed in the motion indicate they are based in Pakistan, South Africa, the Philippines, and Kenya. If Jakes’ subpoena effort succeeds, he could obtain IP addresses and email addresses from YouTube. Then, according to the motion, the pastor could sue the responsible parties for defamation.
NBC News, which broke the story of Jakes’ latest legal move, has been investigating AI-generated misinformation. It identified YouTube clips that feature “false information, doctored photos, and lurid claims about Jakes.” Some videos, monetized through advertising, have more than 1 million views.
Other Black celebrities—including Denzel Washington and Steve Harvey—also have been targeted by misinformation, according to NBC News. When the network contacted YouTube about some of the questionable content, the platform took action against some of the offending videos and channels.
But Jakes’ attorney said he’s tried for a year, with few results, to get YouTube to remove misinformation about his client. Despite the controversy, YouTube has been embracing the “potential” of AI-generated content, while admitting that the technology introduces “new risks.”
TD Jakes Denies Rumors About Wrongdoing
During a Christmas Eve sermon last year, Jakes addressed rumors that he had participated in one of Combs’ alleged sex parties. The devil is behind all those “lies,” he told worshipers, adding that he wanted to focus on preaching God’s truth.
Jakes, 67, is senior pastor of The Potter’s House. For the past three years, he has hosted a sermon series on Revolt, a media company that Combs launched but no longer owns.
