The Ben Mulroney Show - EXCLUSIVE -- Canadian fiddler Ashley MacIsaac and the lies AI wrote about him

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

GUEST:  ASHLEY MacIsaac GUEST – Gabriel Latner / lawyer with ADVOCAN  If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠���⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And bet your way. Must be 19-plus, Ontario only. Play responsibly. Concerned about your gambling. Visit connectsonterio. This is the Ben Romeroon show, but with Lisa Raid guest pitching today, you know, when I first was elected way back in 2008, I noticed that I didn't love my Wikipedia page. You know, you go online to see what people thought about you essentially.

And there are some things in there that I really disliked and I didn't agree with, and I tried to change it. I have to tell you that I was never able to get them changed. But I figured, okay, it's on the internet, it's in print. What does anybody really care? I warned my kids never to read mom's Wikipedia page. And when I meet people, say, please don't read my Wikipedia page. Now, of course, all of you are going to go now and read my Wikipedia page, and that's okay.

It's fine. But on Friday last week, I got a note, a text actually, because somebody was trying to charge a large VRA bill on my credit card. What turns out at the end of the day is that my account got taken over. My Apple, if you carry one of these Apple wallets on your telephone, you know, you can put your credit cards in, your debit cards in. I have that. I use it. I love using the tap. It works really easily for me. But someone added their telephone number to my Apple wallet and they were having a real good time at Sherway Gardens. Let me tell you that. We were able to figure it out very quickly, but I had to lock down absolutely everything. Listen, I felt really violated. I thought, oh my gosh, what are they buying? How dare they

take my name? And how far did that extend into the rest of my life? Do I have a problem now with getting a mortgage in the future. It took a lot of my time to figure it all out. I'm still not really comfortable with how it all ended up, and I know I'm going to be dealing with the ramifications for a while. But now let's enter another new world that we've been talking about today, and that's AI. What happens if you've worked an entire lifetime to establish yourself and only to have a seemingly rogue AI publish something outlandish and damaging about you? That is an absolute lie. you think that could happen, or do you think, ah, AI, it's above making mistakes like that? Well, I can tell you, Ashley McIsaac is going to disagree with you.

And we have Ashley with us later on in the show. In the case of Ashley McIacacac, Google's AI generated a false summary, which claimed, amongst many other things, that Ashley McIsaac had been convicted of serious offenses. I'm not going to list the offenses because, quite frankly, we don't want to necessarily continue to spread this kind of information out there, which isn't true. But I do think it's important that you hear from the statement of claim that Mr. McIsaac has put with the Ontario courts against Google what he's saying happened to him. Mike, you have actually the statement of claim with you.

Do you mind telling our listeners a little bit more about the kinds of statements that were made in this Google AI overview? Well, the statement of claim has a long list, a very long list of some of the things that were written online. Again, none of these are true, but it did say at one point that Isaac was convicted of a crime that placed him, get this, on the sex offender registry. Unbelievable. That alone is enough to make your toes curl.

He also was apparently received a sentence for sexual assault and internet luring. He was, it said that he was convicted of assaulting a woman in Newfoundland. And he was sentenced to a year in prison, and as a result, he's on the registry for 20 years. Now, there are so much to it. There's at least a page and a half of this. And we don't want to add to it because we don't want to have people think that any of this is true. We don't want to add to the lie. No, it's so true.

It's all lies, all complete AI fabrication. Unbelievable. I mean, and this has such an impact on your life to think, like you said, they actually wrote that he was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison, which is absolutely untrue, completely untrue. So you have to wonder, you know, well, what kind of impact does that have on action? Ashley's life. He's a very famous fiddler. His life is about performing and being paid for performances, quite frankly, and he's a wonderful entertainer, and we love having him at concerts right across the country and around the world. But has this impacted him personally? And of course, it has. So here's what happened. He was set to have a gig. A First Nation in Quebec had actually

contracted with him for a performance, for a concert. And they canceled it after seeing the AI summary. they figured it out and they later apologized, but that was something that really happened to Ashley. So how did it happen? What Ashley says happened is that the false claims were coming from articles about a different person with the same last name. So like take a pause for a second, folks, and think about how many people share your last name?

How many times could AI be getting this wrong? How could this happen with Google's AI? How could this kind of miscrossed information actually make it into publication? And the answer is, we don't know, quite frankly. Now, he is suing Google for $1.5 million. And what he's saying is that the company published defamatory content. And get this, they failed to apologize, retract, or even take responsibility. The lawsuit goes on to say that Google knew that its AI could produce untrue information

and that Google should be liable for the harm that's caused, like the cancellation of the concert. You know, if a human spokesperson had made these false allegations on Google's behalf, a significant award of punitive damages would be warranted because you could point to the person who was saying it. So the question now becomes, I think for all of us, is does Google get to have lesser liability because all of these things were published by software

that Google created and controlled? So we get to sue the algorithm. Is that what this is all about? That because it's an algorithm that did it and that it's not necessarily a person that said it, well, they get off scot-free. Well, I don't think Ashley McIsaac is necessarily going to agree with all of that. What did Google say?

Well, Google issued a statement in December, and it said that its AI summaries are frequently changed to provide the most, quote, helpful information. And when online content is misinterpreted, those mistakes are used to improve the system. Is that an apology? Those mistakes are used to improve the system. What about improve the life of Ashley McIsaac.

To his credit, McIsaac says the incident, well, to his credit, McIsaac has been really open about what the incident is done. He says, quite frankly, he's left to fear for his safety on stage and he is unsure how long this damage is going to follow him. How long will this attach to him?

I mean, it's on the internet. It's part of an AI bot. It's part of an algorithm discussion. Will this follow him forever? He says that Google should be held accountable. Must be held accountable because its AI published the false statements without having the proper guardrails. So it's going to be an interesting conversation with Ashley McIsaac coming right up. Now you wonder, is this happening anywhere else?

Well, you would have to surmise it is. you'd have to think this must be happening elsewhere. And sure enough it is. Wolf River Electric sued Google after the company's AI falsely claimed it was being sued by Minnesota's Attorney General in a lawsuit that folks never existed. So this one company in the United States sued in American courts because it said that the false AI generated statements appeared prominently in Google search results, which meant that Wolf River Electric had canceled customer contracts in late 2024 because the people

believed the company had settled a government lawsuit. Wolf River has never been sued by the state, yet they were said to have been sued by the state. It shows up in a Google search and as a result, they're losing customers. I mean, think about the impacts that this could have. It actually makes me want to go out and use AI to take a little. look and see whether or not that Wikipedia problem I mentioned at the top is something that continues on for me into the future. I, you know, I reached out to Ashley this morning. I know Ashley because we're both from, as I said, Cape Breton Island. I've enjoyed his music for many,

many years. Ashley's a very colorful individual. He has lots of opinions. I really do enjoy his company. He is an excellent fiddler, a wonderful ambassador for Canada and Cape Breton. and he does do things out of the goodness of his heart, and he's a kind man. He does not deserve to have something like this happen to him. And certainly, if something like that does happen to him, you would think that somebody or a company would do the honest and decent thing and actually own up to it and apologize for it, and they haven't done so at this point in time. We're not going to talk necessarily about the lawsuit specifically with Ashley. We're going to leave that to his lawyers, and they're going to, it's before.

for the courts, it's not easy for him to talk about. But I think it's important because it may be something that you would find interesting that Ashley, how he felt what it means to him and how he is coping with what's been going on. This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate lunch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx in touch. intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move.

In the last segment, we talked about how AI has disrupted people's lives. We talked about what's happening in terms of the Oscars. We've talked about what's happening in terms of maybe going into a hospital room. Now, we're going to talk about something even more human, I think, the impact that AI can can have on your own personal life. We already have chatted about Ashley McIsaac and the lawsuit that he has brought against Google AI and the basis on which he's brought it. But we're going to leave that aside. What we're going to talk about today is we're going to talk to Ashley McIacacic and get an idea of how AI is actually disrupting the life of, I would say, Canada's best fiddler.

We brought you through the what. Now we're going to talk about what's happened since. So I'm so delighted to have with me today, Ashley McIsaac and his lawyer, Gabriel Latner, who's a lawyer with Advocan. Thank you very much, Ashley, for joining me here today, and thank you to you as well, Gabriel. Hi, Lisa. How are you doing? I love the fiddle, man. I'm so happy to hear that, and I have to tell you, for the folks who don't see you on TV, you are proudly wearing a Canadians jersey. I bet you're real happy right now. I'm telling you, I didn't take you tell them, because I think you're probably in Toronto, are you, Lisa?

I am, but right now, Canada's team, man. We've got to go with it. Okay, well, you see, like, I didn't want to disturb the Toronto viewership, but I'm a Cape Ratner, and, you know, as yourself being one, uh, we really only get to choose between the HABS and Boston as our teams, right?

It's not until you move to Toronto that you like Toronto. So I always wear my HAB's jersey. I love it. And, but, but, I mean, it's kind of dangerous. for you, right? Because you don't you live you live next to Detroit? I do, but at least it's the same

color. I got the red. I like watching the Red Wings as well, and so I can't say anything about them. Lots of my friends, of course, are Red Wings fans, so that's how it tells. That's true. And you know a lot of people, so you're going to have a lot of people like in a lot of places.

Ashley, I wrote you this morning and I want to say thank you very much for agreeing to talk to talk with me today on the Bemel-Runy show. It's Lisa here. And the reason being is that it broke my heart to see that you had to go to such lengths and extents in order to talk about something that has much, it must have an incredible impact on you, Ashley. I mean, when you first saw that Google's AI had identified you in the way that it did, what went through your mind? Like, what happened? Well, first, Lisa, let me say

to the point that you made that, you know, thank you for having me on your first show here on this radio show. I know you've done other shows. He did what was it? Straight talk and great stuff. Yeah, that's right. Thank you. Thank you. And of course you were our famous Cape Breton backs.

Your mom was from Cape Breton, right? I am too, dude. I grew up in Whitney Pier. I did. Oh, you were from the Pier here. I am, dear. Well, you know, as Cape Breton, as you know your own self, you've been through a lot of things that life throws a curveball at. and you just go forward.

And when I initially was put in the situation that I'm in now where it's come to the point where I have a lawyer who filed a statement of claim and, you know, there isn't a particular defense response for anything back yet. I don't think, let the lawyer talk about that. But for myself personally, the feelings were I have for many years performed all across this country and around the world and have had. I've had to be honest and open about myself as a person and lots of times, maybe that was ahead of the curve, be it about marijuana rights or gay marriage legalization, different things.

And I've had to face some pretty blowback media. But when something of this nature all of a sudden hits you, you're not prepared for it. And I can't say that being a public person, I'm not prepared for it just about anything that be said. But this scenario was one where I got to say that I was I was gobsmacked. I didn't know what to do. I instantly called people in the music industry and called some legal friends in America and had to play a show the next night and I was ready to go on stage and my first thought was who's out there in this audience that believes what was being now throwing around on the internet and what am i going to do about this and it took me a couple of days of thought

and continued to play before i decided i do have a platform as an artist and candidate to get press and the only way that i can uh hit this in the head is to go to the media and say what's happened to me to first off clear the records oh yeah and more importantly consider what it happened was something that I thought was egregious. Yeah, 100%. So what did people from back home say when they saw it? Well, maritimeers are very, you know, they take things with a grain of salt sometimes.

So I had a lot of positive, of course, feedback for people. But initially, before I went to the press in those first few days, there was a lot of sharing. like it's the world we live in. We live in a world of, you know, Twitter and Facebook and that sort of thing. And it's not, you know, it's not the old days where a news story might get printed and then it's moved on next. It just flourishes.

So there was a lot of really negative and really scary, like to say, comments that were being said about me from what Google had put on this AI review about me. Yeah. And you know, you're not the only one. I just read out before you came on a couple of instances that have happened in the United States along the same kind of lines, but nothing, nothing as harmful and detrimental as the, you know, what they were writing, what they were publishing about you on it? What made you think that at the end of the day, this has to go to court?

I know it's one thing to clear the record. I agree with you 100%, but why did you decide that this was the place to go? And I'm happy if you're a lawyer, Gabe, wants to weigh in on this too. Well, I'll let her speak, but I'd like to say first that my feelings on the situation was because, you know, I'm a pragmatic person. You don't know what I've spent a lot of time in the media and I know that nobody wants to continue and give legs to a story that's really negative. So I didn't want to go to the press, but I had to because I felt that in my situation, because I could, I could bring attention to what happened. I looked,

quickly online and seen that there was a case of somebody in Ireland, a news broadcaster was having the same sort of things attributed to him because of his surname or whatever was the case. I didn't know at that point yet what the connection was to somebody having the wrong surname. And you imagine, like you were the Labor Minister, you were the deputy leader, you've had all kinds of high profile jobs and Cape Breton has Al McGinnis, Cape Breton has Mike McPhee, you know, Nick McNeil, hockey players and the rankings and lots of famous people. But me, for some reason, it always ends up that the big crazy stories surround me,

and I wasn't looking for this. No, this just happened without me trying to promote anything. It was completely out of the blue. So I felt like if this could happen out of the blue with no connection to me going to media and looking for some, you know, salacious story about AI, that this was all being spread. what could happen to regular person. And my first thought was what would be the situation

if you lived in Saskatchewan and your name was Laura Holoka. And you decided to open a kindergarten center. And then for some reason, they decided to look at that surname and go and put the sort of stories about that famous, you know, horrible murder case from the 90s towards it.

And I thought, this is crazy. I could have been at a border being held in a jail because it said I was on the sex offender registry. So I knew that I had to do something and I had to go whatever legal route was possible. And when I did the story, a lot of lawyers presented me in their case for thinking why they should be the person that helps me out with this if I wanted legal help. And the first one that contacted me in the second or so email and then a call, they have happen to say that they were married to a Cape Breton.

They said, okay, well, that's good for me. There you go. They must have good judgment. They must have good judgment. Do wherever they are. I love, oh, I appreciate that. Listen, I've got to go to a break. Ashley, could you and Gabe stick around just for, for some questions off the top? I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you think the suit is going to go. Ben Marloree show, but today you've got Lisa Raid.

And also with me is Canadian fiddler extraordinaire, Ashley McIsaac, and his lawyer, Gabe Letner. And we are talking. about an absolutely atrocious situation. It has to do with AI. It has to do with things that AI has published about Ashley McIsaac, which now Ashley McIsaac has brought a lawsuit against Google AI4. When we left, we were talking about how it's impacted Ashley and what his reaction was at the beginning. And actually, what Ashley said, and I think it's so admirable is he said, if it could happen to me, it could happen to anybody. I've got the platform. I'm the one that's going to stand up for everybody else. And God love you.

Ashley for doing this. So what I wanted to talk to about in this segment is a little bit more about the, where's the accountability on all of this? You know, if a person stood up and said it, they would be duly reprimanded and they would have some, you know, there would be repercussions. But this is an algorithm. This is some kind of artificial intelligence out there. Does that mean they necessarily get off scot-free? So with that, I'm hoping, Gabe, that you can maybe give us an idea of what was it about Ashley's case or set of facts that, caused you to think, yeah, this is something I'd be interested in. Sure. I'm happy to speak to that. There are some things I can't say, obviously, but very broadly,

this is an incredibly unusual defamation case. Normally in a defamation case, you're arguing about kind of three things. Did the person actually say it? Is it defamatory, which means, is it insulting? Does it lower the victim's character in the? the eyes of the public? And is there a defense to it? And the most common defense is called justification, which basically means it's true. If you call a spade a spade, the spade can't sue you. This case is truly bizarre, not just because of the outrageous nature of the accusations, but because there really is no dispute that these statements were published by Google, that the statements are incredibly defamatory and that they're very obviously untrue. Mr. McIsaac's criminal record is essentially available

for review. You can look up court records and there are no cases remotely like any of this. And so it really comes back to what you just said, which is, is a company going to be responsible for what its AI says? And I've been doing this for a few years. I can't think of a single reason why a court would ever say that the company that puts out the AI that is making money off of the AI that is getting viewers and ads off of the AI won't be responsible for what the AI does. That's just, it's inconceivable to me. Yeah. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. I, of course, I've read a lot of stuff down because this scenario and I seen something today posted by another media open it. So again, I don't know what it means, but the notion of Canadian defamatory law that

there doesn't need to be proof of intent and that they can't use the algorithm defense. You mentioned about the algorithm, Lisa. This is something that it's not a search engine that published this. This is AI review published this and it was, you know, Google that's responsible for releasing AI reviews with no guard mail that prevented this. Is that something that will be argued on behalf of the negligence of, as we see it, of Google? What do you think, Aith? So actually, maybe we won't get into specific legal theories while the lawyers on the other side can be listening in. But at a high level, yes, that is true.

What's happened historically with search engine defamation cases is the search engine has said, we're not actually publishing this information. All we're doing is linking to another website. And the other website is what's publishing the information. What makes this case very different is this was not a link to another website. This was not a summary of another website because there are no other websites that are truthfully or falsely alleging that Ashley did these heinous, heinous comments. Yeah, exactly.

So this was something that this, you know, I'm no computer AI expert, But as I understand it, any LLN is basically just a text generator. Yeah. It looks at a whole bunch of factors. It runs some math and it spits out text and it hopes that it sounds good. You know, it's funny. Somewhere in that magic, go ahead. Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

It's so, actually, I guess with, because, you know, Gabe is right. We don't, we don't want anyone out there listening, understanding what your legal theory is going to be because we want you to do well in all this. But I do have a question for you. I want to know. Let's say all of this is over, the issue is fixed, all that stuff. What about the future? Do you trust Google to do the right thing going forward?

Well, let me say, as an artist, you know, I'm just a fiddler. I'm somebody who's an entertainer. I find AI so extraordinary for what it's discovering with, you know, super computing abilities in medicine and science and space. and math and I'm using AI in production right now. I don't think that the intent of Google is one to want to not do positive things, but in this scenario, I hope the right thing is done. And for me, by bringing a lawsuit forward, our belief is in the statement of claim.

And that is that there's something that's, I don't understand the mechanics of it. I wouldn't try to discuss the mechanics of it. What I'm getting at is that in my books, uh, AI is responsible. Now, I can't say that legally that they are because that's for a court to decide. Right, right.

And so I would hope that the right thing is to prevent this type of thing from happening to other people. You know, like I said in the beginning, I'm pragmatic. I'm not, if I was in America and I was suing, people soon for having a cup of copy, she's built on for $500 million. No stupid stuff. Yeah. This isn't about punitive damages and amounts and such.

It's about trying to be pragmatic about how this plays for it. And I believe Gabriel, as my lawyer, will agree that the arguments are to be made, hopefully in a court that something will have to be put up as a guard will. Yeah. We're going to invite some of your, oh, go ahead, Gabe. Yeah. That's certainly central to what we're doing here. And to your original question, which was, do we trust that things will be done properly going forward?

Usually a case doesn't get to the stage of a lawsuit if there is good faith on both sides and everybody is doing the things that they should have done. I was, you know, I first learned about this in December when there was the first rush of press coverage. and the thing that shocked me the most is that Google didn't admit that it did anything wrong. They didn't apologize and they didn't issue a retraction. Wow. So if they didn't do that in this case, what is the reason to expect that they'll do that in any other case, especially with someone like the Laura Homulka in Saskatchewan? Yeah.

Someone who's not in how press articles written about them. It is so true. Now, just before we came into this segment, Gabe Ashley mentioned that the deciding factor in why he chose you as counsel other than the fact that you're brilliant, of course, is a fact that you're married to a Cape Retter. Now, you're estimated the value of marrying well to your career. Very good. Well, we've got the whole Cape Breton connection going on there.

We're going to, I'm going to ask, if there's any listeners out there who want to text in and give some comments, that would be great. It's 416-870-6400. 4-16-870-600. Ashley, just turning the page a little bit from this situation into maybe what you're up to this summer. I think I saw on Facebook you're going to be having some concerts in your house. Tell us a little bit about that before we go. I am.

I hope you come down to Cape Bretton. Look, and I didn't get a chance to ask this morning. I hope Bruce is okay. Thank you. How is Bruce? He's doing well. Thanks so much, Ash. Okay.

Well, if you're down to Cape Breton, stop by my house, I'm doing a few concerts. I'm in the process of working on a country record. I'm always playing fiddle tunes. I'll be in different places. I play for the snowbirds. I play for whoever wants to hear me play the fiddle. And do you got 20 seconds before your commercial? Because I wrote something just before this.

That's really cute. You got 20 seconds. Go for it, man. This is the Ben Melrooney show. I'm Lisa Rait, and this is Chorus Radio Network. Go. You'll play us out, Ash. Dear AI, dear AI, oh, what did you say?

Oh, Kearney and Pierre and Ashley today. Can't always believe what it has to say. That's how we all live today. It's absolutely, absolutely fantastic. Actually, I'm applauding here. I love you, man. I will see you in St. Peter's this summer. Thanks so much for everything, and best of luck.

Thank you so much, Gay. Thank you very much, Lisa. Good luck with you get in a new radio show. I love to hear on the radio every day. Thanks, bud. Behind every F-35 jet is a Canadian company. Horizontal Tales built in Winnipeg, engine sensors from Ottawa, and stealth composite panels crafted in Lunenberg to name just a few.

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