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German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews

the-decoder.com

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

#531

Post by [deleted] »

Saline9515 wrote: post #452
DonHopkins wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Lawfare" is a propogandistic term coined and used hypocritically by people who get away with doing illegal things themselves, and have a long track record of getting revenge for being legally indicted and prosecuted, by gleefully going after innocent people on their enemies list with the very legal system they control themselves. And you know exactly who I mean, who uses that term all the time.

The term is older than Trump. Suing everyone who criticizes you is a classic example of lawfare. The goal is not justice but the chilling effect created by your legal actions.

[deleted]

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

#532

Post by abustamam »

luke5441 wrote: post #528
RobotToaster wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about a country where someone had their house raided and their devices stolen by the police for tweeting "Du bist so 1 Pimmel" (you are such a dick) to a politician.

This was later deemed inappropriate by courts. Shit happens -- as long as the corrective mechanisms work it is just exceptions.

I'm not super convinced that we can call something like that as "shit happens." in the US "shit" like this happens where cops wrongly raid someone's house and someone often dies because of of this. Though, I think it may be an example of corrective mechanisms not working, but this shouldn't have even happened once.

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

#533

Post by JamesSwift »

9rx wrote: post #432
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Google search was simply repeating quotes from other websites - those other websites would be responsible for their content. Now that Google is manufacturing answers using their own LLM, they are responsible for whatever results that produces.

> Now that Google is manufacturing answers There isn't someone at a keyboard typing content. It's still just search, repeating quotes from other websites. The difference is that the algorithms have turned lossy, so the quotes are not always preserved in their original form.

Look... its clear you didnt read the article. The point of contention is that google _hallucinated_ facts. As in, website 1 said company A exists and website 2 said company B committed a crime and now googles AI summary says company A committed a crime while linking website 1 and 2.

The court found google to be liable for that, because company A has no other recourse otherwise. Which website operator was the company supposed to contact to remove this "false" information? It only exists in the aether of google search results, and only as a side effect of them adding functionality into that when someone is searching.

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

#534

Post by CamperBob2 »

9dev wrote: post #527
CamperBob2 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your beef is with the NYT in that case. Not with the neutral aggregator who includes a specific disclaimer that its output may be incorrect due to unavoidable technological limitations.

It doesn’t matter who you’re angry with in that case, because you’re going to suffer the consequences regardless. No lawsuit is going to reimburse for that.

No one is going to suffer consequences because of a Google AI summary. If they do, that's not Google's problem. It's someone else's fault, principally those who blindly acted on information they were told was potentially incorrect.

In the world according to you, AI couldn't exist. Or more likely, it would be accessible only to academic and corporate/financial/government/military elites. That's not OK, and I'm unwilling to join you in pretending that it is.

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

#535

Post by cute_boi »

biosboiii wrote: post #394
CarlitosHighway wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot get sued for a review just because it's lower than 5 stars. But of course if you write something like "I found a dead cockroach in my pizza", or "I hard that they don't clean the dishes enough" in a review without proof, that's defamation. And it doesn't matter if you give 1 or 5 stars with the review.

There are agencies in Germany where you can buy review removals in a web shop for like 50 euros per review. You just have to link the review and they will send Google a legal document to delete it.

I was travelling in hudson yard ny, and I can see ads where they claims they can remove any google review for $1000.

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

#536

Post by mrguyorama »

l23k4 wrote: post #163

Wow, you guys really think this is good? Because of the same rules, German restaurants also get to pick and choose which reviews stay up. They can literally take down any specific reviews they like. A restaurant that mostly gets 1 star reviews will still show up with 5 stars on Google maps, as they will simply delete the reviews with less than 5 stars as defamatory. Here's a couple of examples: https://www.reddit.com…

Or, you know, Google's review system has no law that actually ensures they only remove valid and actual defamation claims from the system, so they just remove whatever and claim it's defamation.

The US has no strict defamation law and yet your bad review will often still get removed from Amazon or Yelp for no valid reason.

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

#537

Post by 12_throw_away »

Robotbeat wrote: post #466
novemp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, obviously.

What if they just make a mistake, unintentionally?

Publishing lies that were generated by the plausible-lie-generating-machine is a very intentional action, it's not a "mistake".

The legal profession uses the term "reckless disregard", see, e.g., [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan

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

#538

Post by luke5441 »

abustamam wrote: post #532
luke5441 wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was later deemed inappropriate by courts. Shit happens -- as long as the corrective mechanisms work it is just exceptions.

I'm not super convinced that we can call something like that as "shit happens." in the US "shit" like this happens where cops wrongly raid someone's house and someone often dies because of of this. Though, I think it may be an example of corrective mechanisms not working, but this shouldn't have even happened once.

It's not like the raids in the US because there are less guns around. So risk of someone dying because of a house search are pretty low (supported by police death numbers). This would be more about privacy violations and unnecessary chicanery.

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

#539

Post by ben_w »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #511
ben_w wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No quibble" is more a mark of ASI than AGI; while both are easily coopted as marketing terms[0], "smarter than all humans" is harder to dispute than "general intelligence" (can do some graduate level work, can't drive well enough to render steering wheels obsolete, is it general?) [0] e.g. Zuckerberg: https://www.meta.com/superintelligence/

> "smarter than all humans" is harder to dispute I don't think this is the case. It's not clear intelligence is a coherent concept to begin with, let alone a one-dimensional thing you can maximize. What, is it going to write stageplays that puts shakespeare to shame? Find a way to enforce world peace or end greed? I'm not at all convinced we anything more than the simple competency we expect from humans is possible.…

> What, is it going to write stageplays that puts shakespeare to shame? Find a way to enforce world peace or end greed?

If it did, who would say "nope, still not super-intelligent"?

(I'm sure it's more than "nobody": the least realistic thing to me about my brother's LARP group was that nobody in that universe denied the gods it contained even though they'd immediately smite anyone who did that).

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

#540

Post by MaKey »

kwanbix wrote: post #405
CarlitosHighway wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot get sued for a review just because it's lower than 5 stars. But of course if you write something like "I found a dead cockroach in my pizza", or "I hard that they don't clean the dishes enough" in a review without proof, that's defamation. And it doesn't matter if you give 1 or 5 stars with the review.

That is in practice not true. If you leave a fake but glowing 5-star review, no business will challenge it. But if you leave a 1, 2, 3, or even 4-star review, suddenly you're asked to provide proof. Of course, they can legally challenge a 5-star review as well. But in reality they conveniently don't seem to care about those. Anyway, Germany is probably one of the few places where this happens. The issue isn't necessa…

Having proof is not always enough. I had a bad experience with a shady used car salesman and my review was removed by them. I appealed, nothing happened. I deleted the review and put up a new concise one with proof. It wasn't published. The appeal was eventually successful but my new review still not published. I appealed via arbitration, which was decided in my favor but the review is still not published, as their decision is not legally binding. So Google rather pays hundreds of Euros in arbitration fees than publish my honest review. In the arbitration process they said that because I deleted my first review there is nothing they could do, which to me is nonsense. Overall the Google Maps review situation is very frustrating. At least they now show how many reviews have been removed in the past year for defamation for every Google Maps listing.
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