Companies generally are liable if their product doesn’t perform. No reason AI should be any different.
That’s not very typical in software. Especially software you don’t pay for (with money)
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
#52Google generated those content, so Google should be liable to its own product, that's different from the third party links they just simply gathered and displayed, totally different things. If you are a victim too, reply below.
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#53Google generated those content, so Google should be liable to its own product, that's different from the third party links they just simply gathered and displayed, totally different things. I wonder how many victims are there now.
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#54EU countries continuing to ensure the conditions for their future economic competitivity
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#55> In this case, Google's AI had wrongly linked two publishers to scams and shady business practices. Guess that's the end of their AI overviews in the EU!
You'd think so, along with other countries that have defamation laws. But there's no indication of any penalty, and Google wasn't even made to pay all the legal fees. Perhaps their business model (if there is any) can cope.
In sane countries, it's enough for them to post a disclaimer ("This is AI. AI can make mistakes. Check all results.") Which is what they do.
Overregulation, at best, is a good way to guarantee that your country won't have access to interesting and useful features and technologies. At worst, it's a good way to guarantee that the twenty-first century will belong to the US, if not to China.
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Pretty much the exact thing that Google AI Overview does. No, the article implies the court’s logic is that the AI search results are presented as search results and that’s a big part of why they are liable. It seems like the court (again, according to the article) does not find the disclaimers that Google has slapped on the AI results compelling because again, it chose to represent these as a summary of search res…
Apparently, if they were search results, they wouldn't have been liable, since there's an exception to defamation laws. Without any exception, defamation is defamation, it doesn't matter how it's presented.
Google does remove defamatory results I believe at least partially in response to being sued. However there is a distinction if they have been informed it is defamatory.
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#57I'm surprised this is even a thing. After all, you go to Google not for the truth, but to search Google. Since when is truthiness the "guarantee of service"? You're not even paying for a google service, search is free... You might be the product, and your data, but you didn't directly pay for a service and they didn't sell you a fake service. I'm not taking Google's side, this isn't about whether it's right or wrong…
I go to Google to search, but get spammed as if I wanted to talk to a chatbot (and a very poor quality chatbot at that).
This is a gigantic own goal for Google. The average person’s impression is that Google AI is much worse than ChatGPT, even though that’s not actually the case. Google is shoving a terrible model in everyone’s faces.
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#58I agree with the ruling, but this makes me wonder if it will be possible to have any AI agent at all if it's consistently applied.
After all, if I can get ChatGPT or Claude to say something false that should count too, right?
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#59Doesn't libel require to be deliberate? Ie you can't sue for libel if the author admits a mistake and corrects it?
It requires the claim to be made with "willful disregard for the truth". Notifying someone, especially with a cease-and-desist on fancy letterhead, makes it legally clear that they know better, and thereafter would be definitely libelling you (assuming the claims are in fact untrue and harmful). But you can still sue them for the claim prior to the notice, you just have to prove they should have known better prior to making the claim.
Re: German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
What don’t you understand? Those websites that defame a company are liable for that defamation. In this case Google defamed a company in its AI summary and is this liable for that defamation.
So if I edit a Wikipedia article to share that consuming poison is safe and someone consumes poison after reading it… is Wikipedia legally liable?
> is Wikipedia legally liable?
Probably not, because it's a similar situation where Wikipedia is accumulating user provided content. And people know Wikipedia can be freely edited.
You, however, might be liable. It's your content.