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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

#541

Post by NateEag »

saalweachter wrote: post #480
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

The thing is, no one has the slightest idea how to stop hallucinations.

The models are fundamentally "hallucinatory" at core - they generate what is _probable to follow the string thus far in its training corpus_, modulo RLHF and friends.

Notice that nothing there has any rigorous relationship to truth.

Sure, the companies could start pumping money into pure research on what models other than transformers might yield something that can reason rigorously, but at that point you're talking about finding a way to throw out LLMs entirely in favor of a less-pathologically-broken model, like Gary Marcus keeps complaining people should be doing.

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

#542

Post by NateEag »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #534
9dev wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unwilli…

What's not okay is a world where unreliable tools can destroy people's lives based on entirely false information, and the purveyors of those tools and false claims get away scot-free afterwards.

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

#543

Post by TalkingCodeMonk »

ElProlactin wrote: post #444
TalkingCodeMonk wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never implied the 1950's was the pinnacle of morality. I was referencing the tropes that "traditional" "conservative" politicians since Reagan have consistently virtue signaled, while they aggressively worked to achieve the exact opposite. There is evidence of that being a common 50's perspective though. It was when most conservatives and liberals alike had been burned by the greed of the guilded age, stock market…

> Hard work actually resulted in financial security, and greater opportunity for your children. The economy of the 1950s was due to a variety of factors, including lack of international competition (European and Japanese industrial bases were devastated in the war), pent up consumer savings from war time, demographics (the baby boom), etc. Unionization was certainly a part of the mix but it seems you're cherry-pickin…

How is it a romanticization to assert what the entire history of global demographics and statistics support?

The distribution of work vs financial security was not uniform, but every developed economy had a greater distribution of wealth and stronger economic mobility in the 1950's than in the 1930's, or almost any time in human history. Every country not directly involved in cold/civil war improved in these factors from 1945 until the 80's, and that has continued in most of the developing world until today.

Do you believe black or indigenous populations were in a better position in 1930, or at any time during colonialism/imperialism, than they were in 1950? If you did, you would be wrong, and the only way to support it is by "cherry-picking" and "romanticization".

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

#544

Post by CamperBob2 »

NateEag wrote: post #542
CamperBob2 wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unwilli…

What's not okay is a world where unreliable tools can destroy people's lives based on entirely false information, and the purveyors of those tools and false claims get away scot-free afterwards.

So your position is that the general public should be given access to AI only when it is either capable of flawless accuracy, or when the AI provider is prepared to assume unbounded liability despite warning the user that perfect accuracy is not possible.

Correct? Or am I misinterpreting your post?

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

#545

Post by jibal »

Hfuffzehn wrote: post #403
jibal wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that is in the ruling.

https://the-decoder.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/26_O_869_... "Tatbestand Die Verfügungsklägerinnen begehren von der Verfügungsbeklagten die Unterlassung von Darstellungen KI-generierter Antworten in einer Suchmaschine. ... Die Verfügungsbeklagte betreibt eine Internet-Suchmaschine unter google.de in Deutschland. Dabei werden nach der Eingabe von Suchbegriffen durch eine die Suchmaschine benutzende Person auf den „…

Which says nothing at all that is like your claim.

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

#546

Post by nobody9999 »

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.

>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.

According to[0] the (aptly named) Lawfare Institute:

   Since the term “lawfare” is controversial in some circles, and subject to a 
   variety of interpretations and uses, a bit more explanation about our 
   understanding of the concept is in order. Going back to the 1950s, the term 
   has frequently been used in contexts wholly unrelated to national security, 
   ranging from divorce law to courtroom advocacy to colonialism to airfare for 
   lawyers.
While the term is often used to do as you assert, it can also have a different remit. cf. some of the topics addressed[1] by the aforementioned Lawfare Institute.

[0] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/about/our-story

[1] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/

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

#547

Post by l23k4 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #536
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.

>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.

How could Google possibly decide which defamation claim is valid and which is not? What realistic cost-effective alternative do they have which does not involve accepting every report of defamation at face value?

>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.

Amazon and Yelp choose to do that, they are not forced to do that. How is that supposed to be even vaguely relevant?

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

#548

Post by l23k4 »

luke5441 wrote: post #538
abustamam wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's not like the raids in the US because there are less guns around.

As an European, this attitude is absolutely fucking shocking.

Police force their way into my home without excellent cause to do so? I'd want someone executed. It would be unforgivable.

It has nothing to do with the guns, but with the absolutely gross violation of the most basic rights codified by the ECHR.

>This would be more about privacy violations and unnecessary chicanery.

Which is actually worse than the typical American shooting. US cops do not typically go to the scene planning to murder someone, in this case the German cops very much knowingly went to harass someone for calling the German interior minister a prick. It is absolutely egregious premeditated harassment.

German minister of interior, the guy in charge of the police, sending the cops to harass people for calling him a prick. Even the current US admin is not so thin-skinned.

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

#550

Post by Robotbeat »

em-bee wrote: post #120
Robotbeat wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deterministic responses are not expected from something clearly labeled able to make mistakes.

it's not clearly labeled. it's a search engine. i expect deterministic responses from that.

It literally says “AI can make mistakes.” And yeah, I’m sure everything else on the Internet was true before.
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