Google tried to overturn a landmark Munich ruling on AI search liability by appealing, then quietly settled. The strategy isn't working. The Aachen Regional Court just applied the exact same reasoning in a new case where Google's AI falsely attributed criminal offenses to a doctor that actually involved someone else. A consistent legal view is forming across German courts, and it treats Google's AI answers as the company's own content.
It is the company’s own content. They are running the LLM and the LLM is just a tool with no responsibility on its own. If the tool is unreliable that is Google’s problem.
I really hope more courts pursue this path. If a car was put on market that was found to have a manufacturing defect that’s caused nearly 40 deaths, it’d be taken off market right fast. If a food product is sold that’s found to have been contaminated, it doesn’t even need to have caused harm for it to be pulled off the shelves.
It’s absolutely bananas that we have a technology that the creators themselves say they’ve lost control over on multiple occasions, that’s been proved to exacerbate problems for people with mental illnesses, and has so far played a part in several dozen suicides and homicides including at least two mass shootings, just be freely accessible and encouraged to be adopted left and right by absolutely everyone.
Exactly, if they’re presenting false information in response to a query, then the machinery that generated that false information is an implementation detail. Shouldn’t matter who or what wrote it. If Google’s logo is right there, then they are the ones responsible for it.