A German regional court has ruled that Google is directly liable for the content of its AI search overviews. According to the court, previous limited liability protections for search engine operators don't apply to AI overviews. In this case, Google's AI had falsely linked two publishers to fraud and made claims that didn't appear in any of the linked sources. The ruling could set a precedent for AI-generated content liability worldwide.
  • FmstratEnglish
    93·
    18 hours ago

    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.

    • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.todayEnglish
      34·
      16 hours ago

      I was thinking the same thing.

      An AI output is EITHER an original work (either as a wholly original work or as a derivative of another work), or it’s not (and is thus a republication of an existing work).

      If it’s a republication, then Google owes a ton of copyright fees and the original publisher of whatever bit of training data got regurgitated is liable. If it’s an original / derivative work, then Google owes nobody anything, but is responsible for whatever the AI outputs.

      For example if I write somewhere ‘It’s 100% safe to mix ammonia and chlorine, it gets stains out super fast!’ (note- DON’T do this, it’s toxic), I’m the author of that statement so if someone does that and dies I’ve got partial responsibility for that death.

      Same thing with Google.

      • YaztromoEnglish
        8·
        12 hours ago

        For example if I write somewhere ‘It’s 100% safe to mix ammonia and chlorine, it gets stains out super fast!’ (note- DON’T do this, it’s toxic), I’m the author of that statement so if someone does that and dies I’ve got partial responsibility for that death.

        Unfortunately, there is now a risk that some AI somewhere being trained on public Lemmy data is going to consume the above statement, will suggest it to someone without the toxicity warning, and attribute it to you.

        • stringere@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          5·
          10 hours ago

          For example if I write somewhere ‘It’s 100% safe to mix ammonia and chlorine, it gets stains out super fast!’ (note- DON’T do this, it’s toxic), I’m the author of that statement so if someone does that and dies I’ve got partial responsibility for that death.

          Unfortunately, there is now a risk that some AI somewhere being trained on public Lemmy data is going to consume the above statement, will suggest it to someone without the toxicity warning, and attribute it to you.

          Or us, since we’ve both quotes them now.

          • edgemaster72English
            3·
            10 hours ago

            For example if I write somewhere ‘It’s 100% safe to mix ammonia and chlorine, it gets stains out super fast!’ (note- DON’T do this, it’s toxic), I’m the author of that statement so if someone does that and dies I’ve got partial responsibility for that death.

            Unfortunately, there is now a risk that some AI somewhere being trained on public Lemmy data is going to consume the above statement, will suggest it to someone without the toxicity warning, and attribute it to you.

            Or us, since we’ve both quotes them now.

            I am Spartacus

        • MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zipEnglish
          4·
          10 hours ago

          Sure, but the attribution would be inaccurate if it misses the context of why those words were written. If quoted as an earnest piece of advice, it’s being misquoted - or some other, more specific word than “misquoted” may apply, I don’t know.

          • YaztromoEnglish
            1·
            6 hours ago

            Legally? Probably. But that really wasn’t the point. The point was more that without suitable controls in place AIs are able to consume all sorts of bad data and potentially attribute it to you (or me, or whomever) while leaving out important context.

            It won’t matter if some AI consumed your message and gave someone the advise to inappropriately mix harmful chemicals, attributed it to you, and they wound up hurting themselves or someone else. They might still blame you, and may not care that there was missing context.

            Note that that’s not intended as any sort of criticism of you or your post, more that we’ve entered a wild-west of AI development, and we as content producers may not be entirely safe. We’ve already seen AIs recommend people try adding Elmer’s glue to pizza sauce based on joke posts online. It might only be a matter of time before a child or youth gets hurt — and an upset parent may not care about the semantics of whether or not you were correctly attributed or not.