Potentially impacting all AI search engines and chatbots known to poorly paraphrase source links, a German court has ruled that Google is liable for false statements in AI Overviews.
The ruling came in a case flagged by The Decoder, where two publishers found that Google’s AI Overviews incorrectly linked them to scams and other sketchy business practices. After smearing publishers by making affirmative statements like “Yes, [it] is known for dubious business practices and is often perceived as a scam,” Google failed to correct the misleading output, even after the publishers sent a cease-and-desist letter earlier this year.
Google tried the usual arguments to shield itself from liability for false statements in AI Overviews, such as arguing that most users understand that AI outputs aren’t always accurate and must be verified.
To be fair, Google has lost a lot of business to ChatGPT & friends who are not offering a list of actual content associated with the search at all. Hate Google as much as you want and I’m sure most of it is warranted, but they’re not completely evil in this case
Alphabet’s CEO would run you down with a bus if they thought it would make their stock go up…
Why defend them when they’ve shown nothing but contempt for their customers?
I mean he would pay someone to run you down in a bus. Guy isn’t going near a bus.
“Their turd sandwich has vegetables in it” doesn’t excuse the fact that they took the ham sandwich off the menu entirely.