A lawyer representing celebrity pastor Bishop T.D. Jakes is going to new lengths to try to combat artificial intelligence-generated misinformation posted about his client on YouTube, saying the platform has failed to effectively uphold its own policies.
On Thursday, Dustin Pusch, an attorney for Jakes, filed a motion in the Northern District of California seeking to subpoena Google, YouTube’s parent company, to share information concerning the identities of four YouTube account holders. They are purportedly located in Pakistan, South Africa, the Philippines and Kenya, according to the accounts’ “About” sections on YouTube.
The motion said these accounts made false claims about Jakes, citing previous NBC News reporting about AI-generated misinformation on YouTube, and added that elements of the videos were likely created with AI tools, including images used in thumbnails and voice-overs. YouTube videos utilizing AI have been popular for years, and YouTube recently introduced AI initiatives to dramatically increase the amount of AI-generated content and material on the platform.
But AI elements have also been used to spread misinformation on videos that have the potential to make a large profit for both YouTube and their creators, by monetizing them with ads. The motion filed by Jakes’ lawyer is a significant development in efforts to combat viral AI-generated misinformation on the platform, being one of the first of its kind attempting to unmask the creators behind it. In previous reporting, a YouTube creator behind similar content previously confirmed their use of AI tools to NBC News, and AI detection experts found a high likelihood of similar content involving AI-generated images and audio.
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YouTube didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the last year, Jakes has been the subject of hundreds of YouTube videos that have received millions of views, part of a torrent of misinformation that stemmed from speculation surrounding allegations made about Sean “Diddy” Combs, with whom Jakes has been associated in the past.
Since Combs was first accused of abuse — in a lawsuit he settled with Casandra “Cassie” Ventura in November 2023 — a flurry of allegations, including sex trafficking, have been made against the rapper and record executive, who was arrested in September and is awaiting trial while in custody. An attorney for Combs denied Ventura’s allegations and said that the settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing. Combs has denied other allegations made in subsequent civil lawsuits and pleaded not guilty in the criminal case.
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Alongside the real news coverage of the Combs case, an online misinformation ecosystem targeting Black celebrities has flourished. In January, NBC News identified dozens of videos with hundreds of thousands of views containing AI-generated misinformation about Combs, Jakes and people like TV host Steve Harvey and actor Denzel Washington.
Some of the videos falsely reported the individuals being arrested and others featured thumbnails with salacious fake images of celebrities in bed together. NBC News found that some of the videos were created using AI tools. YouTube took action on some of the videos and channels NBC News identified. But Jakes’ attorney wrote in his motion that YouTube has failed to take action on many of the videos he’s flagged for the company.
Jakes is the senior pastor at the non-denominational Christian megachurch The Potter’s House in Dallas, Texas.
Since 2021, he hosts a sermon series on Revolt, a media company Combs started in 2013; the rapper stepped down from Revolt last year, selling his stake in March. In 2022, Jakes made a brief stop at Combs’ birthday party. In a 2024 lawsuit, music producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones alleged that Combs planned to “leverage his relationship” with Jakes to “soften the impact” of Ventura’s lawsuit. Combs has not addressed the claim.
Jakes has not defended Combs in the wake of Ventura’s lawsuit, but he has defended himself from an avalanche of “false and absurd videos” about him, Combs and other Black celebrities, the motion said.
“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,” the motion said. “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.”
As described in the motion and in screenshots of YouTube video titles and thumbnails viewed by NBC News, fake images show Jakes in a prison jumpsuit, in handcuffs and in sexual scenarios with other male celebrities. Video titles falsely claim that Jakes was arrested, came out as gay and stepped down from his position at The Potter’s House.
The motion said Jakes’ legal action follows a yearlong attempt to engage with YouTube’s legal counsel on the issue, as well as report videos that violate YouTube’s community guidelines around misleading thumbnails, spam, misinformation and lewd sexual imagery. YouTube has removed some of the videos, but left a majority up, the motion said.
An NBC News review of YouTube search results for “td jakes” and “td jakes diddy” on Wednesday surfaced more than two dozen videos, some with over 1 million views, with titles and thumbnails containing false information, doctored photos and lurid claims about Jakes. Some of the videos connected Combs to Jakes’ recent onstage health incident.
If the motion and subpoena are successful, upon receiving information like IP addresses and email addresses, Jakes may pursue defamation litigation against the people behind the YouTube channels, the motion said. In November, Jakes filed a defamation suit against a man who claimed Jakes sexually assaulted him. The man made the claim on a podcast and no charges were ever filed.
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