I literally laughed out loud reading the headline. Good shit, hopefully the Find Out season will carry on at this kinda pace. Probably won’t, but it’d be nice to see.
A German regional court has ruled that Google is directly liable for false claims in its AI-generated search overviews.
Unfortunately, the regional court is the lowest court stage. This will climb up until highest German court and after this to the EU court, I expect to see.
Being then a „Grundsatzurteil“ that is leading all courts in Germany. Our legal system isn’t case driven.
Unfortunately, the regional court is the lowest court stage
No. Landgericht is the second stage already.
It’s Germany, they’ll just find a way to blame Brussels and throw more money at the US as an apology.
All the arguments of “AI doesn’t impact copyright because it creates derivative content” were bound to lead here. You can’t (or at least shouldn’t be able to) have it both ways.
But your honor I really wanna
Ayyy
Can we apply the same logic and principle to self driving cars now please and hold the owners of the proprietary software fully and properly responsible for every poor judgement, traffic violation, accident injury and death that happens in self drive mode.
Limited liability stops the owners being responsible. It’s the executives running the company that should go to jail.
What needs to happen is:
-
an enforceable certification process, like part of FMVSS, to state “this vehicle is certified as L[0-5] self driving per https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2022-05/Level-of-Automation-052522-tag.pdf”. Put the certification on the window sticker. Have it reported to insurance.
-
Levels 0-2 cannot be advertised as self driving, even though there may be hands-free driving capability in some limited cases. The driver remains fully responsible and liable (no change to current liability rules essentially)
-
Levels 3 and 4 will be required to have shared liability with the driver and manufacturer in all conditions where the vehicle is in control of itself. This includes roads that the vehicle should be able to navigate autonomously and the driver has requested it to, but it is not for any reason.
-
Level 5 would place liability on the manufacturer solely, as there is no indicated driver in this case. This is the only one that can be advertised as “self-driving”.
deleted by creator
Would work IF you add the proviso that levels 3-4 cannot be advertised or implied to operate on their own initiative.
-
Excellent. Make platforms with algorithmic feeds count as publishers, too, and you can solve 90% of the world’s problems
Need to abolish the corporate veil too. Those parasitic fucks can buy liability insurance.
What do you mean by “algorithmic”? Something like a recommendation engine?
Basically anything where the platform prioritises some things over others, rather than just giving you the posts/videos/whatever in order from the people you’ve subscribed to. Recommendation engines would be one example
Well, technically, that’s not correct. Even showing everything in order is an algorithm, but for some reason people don’t the word to mean that. So thanks for clarifying.
To add, what happens is it prioritizes engagement (comments the most, then likes, then dislikes). The problem with that is this ends up prioritizing ragebait, preaching to the choir, disinformation, etc. since that is how you get engagement.
the AI makes its own claims that don’t appear in any linked source, and the operator has to answer for them. […] if it gains traction internationally, the fallout could hit not just Google but every AI provider
And that is a good thing!
We (the world) need at least some basic level of quality and truth in AI generated answers. FINALLY.
This appears to be impossible with current LLMs. You would need an actual human to verify every possible search result as the LLM is incapable of doing that for itself
appears to be impossible with current LLMs
Not the court’s problem.
“Sorry, your honor, my weapon is that faulty so I can never know who it is who will be killed, but I just had to shoot because that’s how I make my money…”
That’s my point, the problem is the LLM itself shouldn’t even be being used to begin with. I’m not defending AI bullshit by any means. I’m saying “truth” or “quality” are not qualities that an LLM will ever possess by its own nature. The ultimate solution for truth or quality is no LLMs, but I guess that ship has sailed.
Sometimes it does not even matter if it is truth or not.
That may actually be such a case here: Factual statements that can create bad reputation for somebody (or some company).
That cannot be libel in most jurisdictions. I’m pretty sure that’s not the case here.
Have you read the verdict?
Then I look forward to future LLMs.
“This slop is not available in your country.”
Hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahaa! YES!
91% accuracy is the kind of thing that may sound good… hey! It’s an A minus! But it’s actually completely, totally unacceptable. Imagine if the turn signal wand on your car operated with 91% accuracy. About one in every ten times it would light up the wrong direction. How many accidents are we causing? A lot.
Even the number is a bit misleading. First of all, anyone who has ever done LLM benchmarking knows that this isn’t an exact science, at all. You can totally get a 99% on a benchmark and fail every single task on another.
But even this particular claim is nuanced. From the original article:
But with Gemini 3, Google’s A.I.-generated answers were more likely to be ungrounded than when the system was based on Gemini 2, meaning the websites they linked to did not completely support the information they provided. In October, correct answers were ungrounded 37 percent of the time. In February, with Gemini 3, that figure rose to 56 percent.
See https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/technology/google-ai-overviews-accuracy.html
Meaning that 56% of the time, users cannot even verify the information given by the LLM with the sources the LLM claims it’s using.
Whether 91% accuracy is acceptable depends on how unacceptable the 9% inaccuracy is. If 91% of the information in your term paper is correct you’ll probably get a decent grade, but if you only kill 91% of cancer cells the surviving 9% will grow a treatment-resistant tumor and you’ll probably die. This makes percentages essentially useless - more important is how badly wrong the worst wrong result is.
So whether it’s acceptable depends on whether it’s acceptable. I agree!
This is why we should ban cars outright. Go back to writing on paper. I can stick a pen in my ass and make a cute drawing of a cat. In fact, I might be able to eat a cat and defecate it later, to make it more realistic. And that’s what we need to be; realistic.
(This comment is about AI data centers)
I make this “comment” every once and a while because I called someone out on how their post made little sense by parodying it, and now I just do this.
I’m glad you’re entertaining yourself because I have no idea what you’re prattling about.
I’m drawing attention to my educational (f)art project while simultaneously goading someone who thought a less-hyperbolous but still nonsensical analogy was the greatest tweet anyone’s ever made. I mean, I remember the first time something I did got seen by millions, so I can understand their enthusiasm to defend it, at the same time, we’re still talking about AI data centers, right? I am, at least.
[mimes bong hit]
Bro, that’s assault. I am the bong.
While this is a solid ruling and establishes great precedent, it’s in Germany and so likely will only eventually apply to the EU. It would be cool to see a similar decision from a US court.
If Google wants to stick with its AI push, I can’t imagine they would want to keep training 2 different models; especially if one of them could land them in more hot water down the road. While it would eventually apply to the EU, I can imagine the rollout would be global. Similar to how Apple was forced by the EU to ditch their proprietary connector for USB-C: instead of having an EU & North American model; they just adapted USB-C across all their devices
They’ll make them click on a liability agreement every time they try to use it.
That doesn’t fly everywhere in Europe
Yes! They are responsible. They’re not quoting, they are hallucinating crap they think someone else wrote somewhere.
Interesting showstopper for the AI-Bubble. Let’s see where this is going.
Okay, but how do you prove any specific allegation when the responses are dynamic?
