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Can we add companies and law enforcement agencies that use facial recognition or LPDR that lead to the arrest and long term incarceration of people who are literally in a different state at the time of the crime? I heard of 3 so far who have lost homes, jobs, child custody, etc. These companies should literally pay restitution and to assist the individuals rebuild their lives.
Great, liability is the only way to get them to care. I wonder how long it will take Google to threaten with pulling out of the EU.
Correct and common sense ruling. The tech broligarchs can't buy the judiciary in other countries like they do here in the US.
Nice. Now, Google will probably just disable AI overview in germany cause they know they can't make it not spew made up crap. The hope's on more countries following suit on this.
As it should. Google is factually responsible for the resulting slop and should be legally responsible for it.
I hope for the one-two punch of:
- they're legally responsible for anything the slop machine says
- the slop is machine generated, so it isn't copyrightable
Also, we got a third benefit if this ruling too. Google said, on the record, that it shouldn't be responsible because you can't trust anything that the slop-generator generates. Having that on the record could also be useful in a lot of other lawsuits.
Seems fair to me. A search engine's whole purpose is to surface real information, not made up stuff.
Its very different than a chat bot, which also needs better rules around it, but I'd definitely hold search to a higher standard.
Nice ;). Does that mean, I can sue them when I see a wrong answer?
Makes sense that if you use AI, it implies that what you put out using it, you've signed off on it.
This makes perfect sense. If you use AI to write a court document it has been set as precedence in multiple countries that the attorney signing the document is responsible for the content even if AI makes stuff up (which it does a lot).
Well, I’m afraid that, unfortunately, this ruling will ultimately never be enforced, as it would make it impossible for the powerful multibillion-dollar corporations to operate this business.
Another example of just how influential these corporations are is the fact that the most profitable piracy operation in history is even possible. Gigantic corporations of major influence have already filed multiple lawsuits over blatant intellectual property theft—yet even these players clearly stood no chance against the concentrated capital that is preventing the AI bubble from bursting immediately.
Therefore: It is the right decision, but it will almost certainly remain without consequence.
Nah, it's like how they fined them hundreds of millions of euros because it was 2 clicks on YouTube to block cookies (the law required 1 click).
The result was that EU visitors to YouTube got 1 click "deny all" button for cookies. Else they'd be fined over-and-over.
The same will happen here. Google will remove AI summaries in Germany. And the German people will be less stupid because of it.
Hopefully this spreads to the whole EU, and then other progressive countries too
I don’t think this can be handled as easily as with cookies or third-party connections that require consent, because Google apparently plans to eventually replace the traditional search engine results pages (SERPs) entirely with an AI chat interface.
In that case, they would have to offer a completely different product just for Germany, or leave this market altogether. Neither option is likely to be viable for Google.
Setting up the AI chat so that it doesn’t provide dangerous answers is, in my opinion, also out of the question, since this can never be guaranteed due to the way LLMs work.
If they did that, then they'll be fined constantly.
The point is that they shouldn't be doing that. We, as a international community, need to make that illegal.
And this is the first stone for that.
Yes, absolutely. I completely agree with you, but unfortunately, for the reasons mentioned, I still think it’s unlikely that this welcome ruling will have any real impact.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m just being realistic. This is by no means an argument against holding the tech giants accountable—we absolutely should!
In that case, they would have to offer a completely different product just for Germany, or leave this market altogether. Neither option is likely to be viable for Google.
Might be only Germany for the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if you see more jurisdictions ruling this way, e.g. there's a case in Canada at the moment where it claimed a musician was a sex offender.
And locally, in Australia we don't have the US style "safe harbor" protections, so companies are already liable for content shown on their sites regardless of who creates it. If courts already won't accept "But somebody else wrote that" as a defence, they won't accept it when it's the companies own products producing it.
"because it alone has influence over the AI's offering and the algorithms with which the AI operates."
Okay so anything someone generates with the AI is owned by the company?
It's like speeding with a stolen car.
You are responsible for the speeding fine, but it does not mean the car is yours.
The court treated the AI overviews as Google's own content and rejected Google's argument that users were responsible for fact-checking the results themselves.
Ah yes we'll force feed you info as the first thing but you're responsible for checking it. What a plan.
I absolutely love seeing these types of rulings. Y'all want the stochastic AI to run all these things be prepared to be legally on the hook for the shit it does and says.
this is an LLM killer for germany, this will force compnays to not rely on these buggy POS until it at least operates reliably. or risk lawsuit as people fish for reasons to sue using the chat bot.
If stupid corporations want to have the same rights as humans then they should be bound by the same laws.
This is a great way to handle it. Just let liability fall on on those responsible for the hazard. Your shitty AI just told some idiot to drink bleach? Your AI company is liable for the damages. Simple, effective.
Seems obvious to me! You made it, your liable.
It's not a just "you've made it" though.
It's a "You push and shove it HARD down people's throat to the point it's almost the only thing they see now apart from ads".
I remember accidentally searching through google once. The AI summary took half the page and there were a whopping 6 ads. Which is almost two pages of scrolling.
So I don't blame users for taking the easy way out and just using the summary. Especially if they haven't heard of uBO + Firefox on mobile. Rawdogging the modern internet is terrible UX. Popups, autoplay, consent forms with a bajillion data "partners". And ads, ads and even more ads.
The real story: how much are they going to have to pay, to whom, to make this go away?
That´s the way to go with this nonsense, make them pay. I wrote about related here: https://medium.com/@klaudibregu/google-greedy-gets-karma-8aebeeb89bcb
It took minutes to ban my account from reddit with it :))
Good. The argument that they can’t control what is said is just asinine. They have the ultimate option, turn it the fuck off.


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