this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
709 points (98.5% liked)

Technology

85330 readers
4207 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
709
Nobody needs AI to search the Internet, court says in ruling against Google (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 day ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
64 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] luciferofastora@feddit.org 1 points 8 hours ago

as a result they aren't really liable or in any way responsible for what you find

One could make an argument that their ranking of results does make them partially responsible for the attention you give to particular sources, but there's no applicable legislation on that topic.

Good luck getting the fossils in our parliament to do something about that: By the time you've explained what it is, why it matters and start talking about the things that could or should be done, someone tells them that it's about maximising ad revenue and they'll immediately go "ah, so the free market will take care of it" and move on to more profitable matters.

This explicitly exposes them to legal risk in a way that they never were before.

I think the assumption was that the AI would be producing the words and thus implicitly bear the legal risk (but can't actually be held liable, which should tarpit the courts trying to figure out how to sue a non-person) and the "check the results" footnote should help shift the burden on the users, "caveat emptor" style.

This judge, at least, wasn't having any of it. If that legal risk wasn't explicit before, it is now.

Let's hope it sticks and spreads.