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.
Used incorrectly and without caution, yes. It can be made to be very useful if proper guardrails are in place and if the LLM is carefully guided in the task it’s performing.
This means, that one should only use an LLM for something they are already quite familiar with doing without an LLM’s assistance. Most people will not be doing this however (or in the case of Google’s “summaries”, unable to as they are not fully in control of the session), and this is where the problem arise.
The cost will never be worth it