German Court Rules Google Liable for False Claims Made by AI Overviews

Court of law in Germany has issued a decision that could revolutionize the use of search engines and intelligent chatbots worldwide. The Munich High Court ruled in this regard Google He is responsible for a series of false statements made by him AI graphics which requires the company to stop broadcasting false or misleading statements through its search engine.

The decision is based on the first case report and Decoder, where two publishers found that Google’s AI-generated abbreviations linked them, in some research, to questionable business practices, scams, and fraud related to registration, without any reason for doing so.

Earlier this year, the affected companies sent the tech giant a cease-and-desist letter, according to the report. Google denied the charge, saying that its short form warns users that the information may contain errors and should be verified individually.

The court’s review said that Google’s AI combined information similar to other companies suspended for illegal activities with data from the plaintiffs, creating associations that did not appear in any content linked to the search engine.

Officials found that, unlike traditional search engines, which only display lists of links and words spoken by other people, Google’s tool creates “independent, innovative, and logical” results based on the misinterpretation of information available on the Internet.

According to the court, correcting mistakes is not the responsibility of others. Google is the only organization that can change the technology following its AI-generated brief and, therefore, “must be held accountable.” In addition, the court found that Google’s defensive strategy was not justified, since the contested summary “contains words that do not appear at all in the search results.

A New (and Powerful) Definition of AI on the Internet

The court’s interpretation of the role of AI in providing search results may make this matter a historic one. It acquires a leading technology company that manages the influence of the most developed content on the most widely used platforms.

Until now, in most laws, search engines are considered as tools that only help to find content created by other people and available on the Internet. This status has given them great protection when the published news is false, inaccurate, misleading, or even defamatory.

However, a German court ruled that this protection no longer applies when search engines include artificial intelligence (AI) systems. According to his opinion, this technology can produce false claims based on multiple sources, therefore, the companies responsible for using it should be responsible for the consequences.

The judges also confirmed that although Google encourages users to verify information due to the possibility of disclosures found in AI models, this warning does not exempt those who share their content. Otherwise, they argued, the victims of falsehoods would not be defenseless, since the original sources had never said this, and therefore, could not be prosecuted.

In the same way, the court said that the results produced by the AI ​​system cannot be protected under the principles of freedom of speech, since they are produced by a process created, trained, and controlled by a company, not expressing the opinion of an individual.

As a precautionary measure, the settlement required Google to remove a large portion of the allegedly defamatory content, and to pay 80 percent of the proceeds of the lawsuit.

Company spokesperson, mentioned and Ars Technica, said the decision could be appealed. “We invest heavily in the AI ​​Overviews brand to ensure that most of the solutions provide accurate information, and are designed to reflect the content of the web,” he said. “We are carefully reviewing this decision, which is not yet final.”