Battle v. Microsoft involves an Air Force veteran, Jeffery Battle, who happens to share the same name as Jeffrey Battle (first name spelled slightly differently), a member of the “Portland Seven,” a group of U.S. citizens who tried to join the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11. Battle sued Microsoft for defamation after he discovered that searching his name on Bing, the GenAI-assisted search engine, generated a short blurb that conflated the bios of the two Jeffery/Jeffrey Battles.
Battle is seeking monetary compensation from the company for the alleged reputational damage that its tool caused. He is also explicitly asking for a “remedy that will ensure that the damaging activities . . . cease and desist and that the false information will be . . . removed” from Bing search results “in perpetuity.” Microsoft has not yet responded to Battle’s complaint.