The judgment results from the first instance reported by Decoder, in which two publishers discovered that Google’s AI-generated summaries in certain searches linked them to questionable business practices, scams, and subscription scams, without any basis.
The report shows that earlier this year, the concerned companies sent the tech giant a cease-and-desist letter. Google has denied liability, arguing that its automatic summary feature warns users that the information may contain errors and should be independently verified.
The court’s analysis found that Google’s artificial intelligence combined information about other companies that had been flagged for potential illegal practices with the plaintiffs’ data, generating associations that did not appear in any of the sources linked by the search engine.
Authorities said that unlike customary search engines, which merely display lists of links to third-party statements, Google’s tool generated “independent, new and relevant statements” based on misinterpretations of information available on the Internet.
According to the court, third parties are not responsible for correcting disinformation. Google is the only entity that can modify the technology underlying AI-generated summaries and therefore “must be held accountable.” Moreover, the court found that Google’s defense is unsubstantive because the disputed summary “contains statements that do not appear in search results at all.
A new (and powerful) interpretation of artificial intelligence on the Internet
The court’s interpretation of the role of artificial intelligence in presenting search results could make this case a historic precedent. Finds a large technology company responsible for impacting its most advanced solutions on widely used platforms.
So far, in most legal systems, search engines have been considered tools that only facilitate access to content created by third parties and available on the Internet. This status gives them a level of protection when the information they publish is false, inaccurate, misleading or even defamatory.
However, a German court ruled that this protection no longer applies when search engines contain generative artificial intelligence systems. According to her reasoning, this technology can generate claims based on multiple sources that do not exist, and therefore the companies responsible for operating it must be responsible for the resulting content.
The judges also concluded that while Google encourages users to verify information because of the possibility of hallucinations inherent in AI models, the warning does not relieve the content distributor of liability. Otherwise, they argued, victims of false testimony would be virtually defenseless because the original sources never gave such testimony and therefore could not be the subject of legal action.
Similarly, the court ruled that results generated by an artificial intelligence system cannot be protected under free speech principles because they are the product of an algorithm designed, trained and managed by a company, and not an expression of individual opinion.
As a precautionary measure to prevent a possible recurrence, the ruling ordered Google to remove a large portion of the statements found to be defamatory in the case and to pay 80 percent of the legal costs arising from the proceedings.
company spokesman, quoted Ars Technica suggested the possibility of appealing this decision. “We invest deeply in the quality of AI reviews to ensure that the vast majority of responses contain accurate information and are intended to reflect information available on the Internet,” the statement said. “We are carefully reviewing this decision, which is not yet final.”