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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

#561

Post by mrguyorama »

l23k4 wrote: post #547
mrguyorama wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's my point.

HN users love to blame this stuff on "Tyrannical EU law" when these things aren't driven by law at all!

If Google says "We are removing this because it violates German defamation laws", they don't have to be telling the truth!

Companies are making these choices for their own benefit and somehow HN posters still blame government.

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

#562

Post by [deleted] »

ben_w wrote: post #539
throwaway27448 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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).

[deleted]

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

#563

Post by throwaway27448 »

ben_w wrote: post #539
throwaway27448 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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).

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

I'd be very happy to get better plays. I don't think we'll see this either, as this implies spending a lot on something with no return.

> (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).

That's sort of my point: judgement across history is inherently a messy process that entails consensus, which is anathema to a capital-driven world. Even the idea that there is a correct way to run society is very western and wouldn't pass earnest scrutiny. I strongly suspect that any sort of "super-intelligence" won't be useful to capital as it won't actually solve capital's problems—instead, it will reveal the contradictions inherent in a capitalist/western society and point strongly towards capital as the cancer that is crippling our planet. Hence, I don't think we will ever see it.

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

#564

Post by jnovek »

gilgamesh-OG wrote: post #422
jnovek wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs will absolutely be like that. The speed this technology is moving at makes me certain, especially over a period of 10-20 years; 20 years ago I was bugging friends for a GMail invite and AI was a joke left to academics. I think it will even be solved soon, like, within the next 18 to 36 months. Hallucinations are the biggest problem consumers have with LLMs and a solution to that would be instantly worth billions…

I don't know if you can "fix" hallucinations without changing the fundamental architecture. The other factor in this article is that prior to the AI summary at the top, Google could simply state that it was an error on the part of the website owner. Now it is being held liable for whatever the summary states - even if it's more accurate, it can still be wrong enough times to be expensive.

They don’t need to be eliminated or “fixed”, they just need to be less frequent than human error.

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

#565

Post by jnovek »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #407
jnovek wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs will absolutely be like that. The speed this technology is moving at makes me certain, especially over a period of 10-20 years; 20 years ago I was bugging friends for a GMail invite and AI was a joke left to academics. I think it will even be solved soon, like, within the next 18 to 36 months. Hallucinations are the biggest problem consumers have with LLMs and a solution to that would be instantly worth billions…

This is disregarding the entire mechanism by which LLMs work. How close to this ideal are the current frontier level ai is now? If you do a cost/improvement analysis does it look like it can reach a usable threshold? I don’t know the numbers but as user, it seems impossible for it to be useful without expert review. It is also debatable if it brings any value when you consider the cost of building and using LLMs and…

Hallucination rates go down by a few % with each new model generation, although some milestones have seen regression e.g. reasoning models are just overall worse. It is a bit hard to measure and compare across generations because the tests have to change in order to stay ahead of training data but they are generally improving. Check out HaluHard, it’s a stress test hallucination benchmark.

https://halluhard.com/

There will never be a time where there are zero hallucinations because of the non-determinist nature of LLMs, but eventually the frequency of hallucinations will be so low that it doesn’t matter. If the robot makes one mistake for every ten a human makes, that’s coming out ahead (depending on the nature of the mistake, of course).

Also I’m not making any value judgement about the technology and how it’s used and, frankly, I don’t really appreciate the assumption that I am. I’m fucking job hunting right now and it’s a hellscape thanks to LLMs.

I’m just being real about where the tech appears to be going based on its current trajectory and my experience in the industry. There seems to be a lot of cope going around that these things won’t ever be good enough to take our jobs. They will, and sooner than any of us are ready for. Leadership is fine with slop as long as it ships, the tech as it stands today doesn’t have to be much better to reach that standard.

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

#566

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

I wrote this at work, but the ruling makes total sense.

Either:

    - Google stole the entirety of the world's copyrighted material and it's using it illegally
    - Or, AI learned, in which case what is writing is the AI's own saying, and since it comes from Google, they are liable for it
They are opposite from my perspective, either they accept one or the other.

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

#567

Post by NegativeK »

9dev wrote: post #319
NegativeK wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's apparently already changing in the EU, where software vulnerabilities mean the company is liable for damages. The only way out is to straight up not make any money (not just from direct sales) from the software.

That is a misrepresentation. You are obligated to actually put effort into securing your products, which is the only sensible stance to take.

How so?

I'm thrilled that companies are liable for crap that ends up hurting other people. I don't think they should get an easy way out, and I also like that there's a carve out for people who aren't making money off of software (like OSS devs.)

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

#568

Post by NegativeK »

ssttoo wrote: post #139
NegativeK wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's apparently already changing in the EU, where software vulnerabilities mean the company is liable for damages. The only way out is to straight up not make any money (not just from direct sales) from the software.

Is the burden of proof on me, the developer? Do I need to prove in perpetuity that I didn’t get a job or a free flight to talk at a conference because of my free software? (Which had a flaw that hurt someone)

I have no clue.

But I do think that this is a much better start than letting companies ignore the impact to software consumers or having open source devs be on the hook for volunteer work.

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

#569

Post by ElProlactin »

TalkingCodeMonk wrote: post #543
ElProlactin wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Let's go back to your original statement:

> What ever happened to the concept of building a valuable, quality product and stable returns for generations? Working to improve the quality of life and standard of living of the community? Of the world? I feel like a 1950's traditional conservative when I suggest that, but most Americans are so heavily indoctrinated with corporate greed and sociopathy they'd consider that sentiment radical leftist extremism.

The implication here was that, at some point in the not too distant past (like the 1950s), the US had less "corporate greed and sociopathy." And that the US was working in some benevolent manner to improve life for future generations and even the entire world.

I made the argument that the economic situation during this period of time was the result of factors like the war and demographic tailwinds, not some sense of morality that has been lost in recent years.

The US has been a violent, oppressive country since its founding. Violence, conquest and displacement, slavery, political assassinations, genocide, brutal individualism.

To suggest that the US of the 1950s, or any other period of time in the 20th century, was morally superior to the US of the 2020s because wealth was more evenly distributed (among working white men) and white men had more economic mobility requires in my opinion a significant romanization about what US society is and was.

The US might have been founded on the highest of ideals but the actual history is very much a story of "actions versus words".

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

#570

Post by Hfuffzehn »

brainwad wrote: post #524
Hfuffzehn wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 „…

> No "Suchmaschine" + no „Suchbefehl“ -> no "Tatbestand" I think you have misapprehended the ruling. Of course running an LLM that spits out libel is also a crime outside of search engines. It's just that _this_ crime has those elements. If Meta's LLM defamed a business, then the ruling would instead talk about Whatsapp users and chats, or whatever.

I think you are misapprehending the ruling.

I someone would put the libellous statement into Google Translate in English and the LLM spits out the German translation would that be a crime from Google?

My point is exactly that the court has not decided more than it has decided: If it is a search in a search engine it is a crime.

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