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German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

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Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#471
post #425

People will complain, but eventually Europe will still be in advance regarding this kind of law. It's annoying and sometimes slows down innovation but US companies are just doing whatever makes money without restrictions...

> slows down innovation A return to the classical understanding of the person, society, and the common good is indispensable.

In reality Europe will be left behind as usual.

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#473

If I get it correctly I like the ruling. So Google has established a product called Search. For that product rules have been established. Google has monopolized that product. Now Google is replacing that product with a new product. But they keep calling it the same thing. Because they want to keep their monopoly. That is what has been deemed illegal. Gemini is not illegal. Pretending the worst version of Gemini is Se…

I dont really understand your reasoning at all, nor what law it would break. What law do you think it would break?

It doesnt even seem to be what the article is saying. This looks like a section 230 sort of issue. Section 230 is a US law that protects platforms like facebook, google etc. being treated as publishers because the information, presumably, is just being passed through. But Germany is saying the AI results are authored by Google.

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#474

If I get it correctly I like the ruling. So Google has established a product called Search. For that product rules have been established. Google has monopolized that product. Now Google is replacing that product with a new product. But they keep calling it the same thing. Because they want to keep their monopoly. That is what has been deemed illegal. Gemini is not illegal. Pretending the worst version of Gemini is Se…

It has nothing to do with monopolies. Google was protected from defamation law with search because the page title and snippets were direct quotes from the linked result page. Whereas with AI overviews, the copy is written by a Google-controlled LLM.

So AI isnt just ripping off the underlying information?

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#476

If I get it correctly I like the ruling. So Google has established a product called Search. For that product rules have been established. Google has monopolized that product. Now Google is replacing that product with a new product. But they keep calling it the same thing. Because they want to keep their monopoly. That is what has been deemed illegal. Gemini is not illegal. Pretending the worst version of Gemini is Se…

I dont really understand your reasoning at all, nor what law it would break. What law do you think it would break? It doesnt even seem to be what the article is saying. This looks like a section 230 sort of issue. Section 230 is a US law that protects platforms like facebook, google etc. being treated as publishers because the information, presumably, is just being passed through. But Germany is saying the AI results…

I don't see a world where AI results aren't reasonably considered the output of the company. They're minced and sausagified regurgitations but they're not the original sources either.

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#477
post #273

I don't fully understand it. Are they liable for content made up by their AI? Or are they now liable for content written by others and summed up (correctly) by their AI?

And doesnt this imply they arent ripping off the underlying information?

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#478

If I get it correctly I like the ruling. So Google has established a product called Search. For that product rules have been established. Google has monopolized that product. Now Google is replacing that product with a new product. But they keep calling it the same thing. Because they want to keep their monopoly. That is what has been deemed illegal. Gemini is not illegal. Pretending the worst version of Gemini is Se…

I dont really understand your reasoning at all, nor what law it would break. What law do you think it would break? It doesnt even seem to be what the article is saying. This looks like a section 230 sort of issue. Section 230 is a US law that protects platforms like facebook, google etc. being treated as publishers because the information, presumably, is just being passed through. But Germany is saying the AI results…

Like it or not, this is how people perceive output from llms. Those ultra rich companies can't forever have the cake and eat it too, just milking global markets forever (I know they of course desperately want and need to, but that's their struggle).

I am fine with that solution since I don't need to shill for them for some ie investment or employment reasons. Less technically skilled people (aka your parents or grandparents) are getting their lives fucked up left and right because they learned to trust search results, and now they suddenly can't.

Own. Your. Shit.

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#479

If I get it correctly I like the ruling. So Google has established a product called Search. For that product rules have been established. Google has monopolized that product. Now Google is replacing that product with a new product. But they keep calling it the same thing. Because they want to keep their monopoly. That is what has been deemed illegal. Gemini is not illegal. Pretending the worst version of Gemini is Se…

I mean was google search responsible for surfacing correct answers? I am not a defend of AI but this seems like a weird piece of legislation.

Original search before Google started trying to provide their own answers was purely pointing to relevant pages, even the first iterations of the first results being replaced by the result Google believed provided the correct answer could be pointed to as simply providing an answer someone else wrote (and to my knowledge was mostly fact based questions; birth dates, etc that are hard to categorize as defamatory). Now Gemini is combining and mixing together multiple sources to provide a new amalgam answer that IMO is distinct enough, and applied to touchier subjects importantly because they're treating the search bar like you're talking directly to Gemini, that it crosses a line between referencing speech by other people without endorsing (OG Search) and having the company produce speech about the search (new Gemini infested Search).

Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

#480
post #425

People will complain, but eventually Europe will still be in advance regarding this kind of law. It's annoying and sometimes slows down innovation but US companies are just doing whatever makes money without restrictions...

> slows down innovation A return to the classical understanding of the person, society, and the common good is indispensable.

I don't even know that I would call it slowing down so much as constraining/focusing innovation.

There's three basic paths for a company hit by this ruling to comply:

  1. Stop showing users generated content.
  2. Figure out how to generate the content with more quotes and attribution to source websites, to regain the protection offered to search engines.
  3. Figure out the hallucination problem, so that every statement in machine generated content is true, or at least defensible.
If this ruling forces companies to put more money into #3, whereas now they're coasting on good enough, I'd say it was speeding up innovation.
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