Im not a lawyer but a lot of what "AI" does seems like it would be uh illegal or at least disastrously bad from a risk management POV.
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This is like real bad for AI.
Again, fresh in-post label for I am not a lawyer and I am reading this through shockingly bad PDF machine translation.
The judge is explicitly cutting down most of the legal defenses they use. They make a sharp cut between search and AI, saying search is indispensable, but AI is not, and defendants have not proven how being held liable for their output would compromise the ability to run a normal search engine. They make a similar hard cut between AI and autocomplete.
They go on at length about the nature of truth in utterances, and arrive at a conclusion that AI output has no protections for free expression because it isn't expressing shit - it has no beliefs, it is a commercial product only. There are two injunctions that are denied because they are not considered statements of fact, but the judge rules against google for all the ones that were, and concludes several are default considered false because the linked pages were irrelevant.
There is explicit differentiation from aggregating reviews and third party content, because the AI generated text and ideas that were not present in the input. There is also discussion about how there is no excuse for further violations just because its hard to control AI output, and contrasts this with how normal "report and takedown" protections work.
There is very little here that is specific to AI overviews in search, and almost all of the arguments apply to AI products in general. AI's only prayer of being remotely profitable must include advertising or shopping features, which means they absolutely must continue generating output that makes statements of fact about other companies. I know nothing about how German courts work, the article alludes to appeals, but if this ruling holds even just in Germany the ability to insure AI products disappears overnight and that makes the product nonviable.
Edit: Germans, German speakers, and I guess by some miracle if there is a German lawyer wandering by, please feel free to correct me and I'll edit the post
@jonny For some strange reason, my general mood just improved dramatically
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This is like real bad for AI.
Again, fresh in-post label for I am not a lawyer and I am reading this through shockingly bad PDF machine translation.
The judge is explicitly cutting down most of the legal defenses they use. They make a sharp cut between search and AI, saying search is indispensable, but AI is not, and defendants have not proven how being held liable for their output would compromise the ability to run a normal search engine. They make a similar hard cut between AI and autocomplete.
They go on at length about the nature of truth in utterances, and arrive at a conclusion that AI output has no protections for free expression because it isn't expressing shit - it has no beliefs, it is a commercial product only. There are two injunctions that are denied because they are not considered statements of fact, but the judge rules against google for all the ones that were, and concludes several are default considered false because the linked pages were irrelevant.
There is explicit differentiation from aggregating reviews and third party content, because the AI generated text and ideas that were not present in the input. There is also discussion about how there is no excuse for further violations just because its hard to control AI output, and contrasts this with how normal "report and takedown" protections work.
There is very little here that is specific to AI overviews in search, and almost all of the arguments apply to AI products in general. AI's only prayer of being remotely profitable must include advertising or shopping features, which means they absolutely must continue generating output that makes statements of fact about other companies. I know nothing about how German courts work, the article alludes to appeals, but if this ruling holds even just in Germany the ability to insure AI products disappears overnight and that makes the product nonviable.
Edit: Germans, German speakers, and I guess by some miracle if there is a German lawyer wandering by, please feel free to correct me and I'll edit the post
@jonny hell yeah!
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@jonny *Bad for AI _in Germany_
@wronglang
Its hard to be exposed to liability constantly to everyone in the entire EU (they make an international claim of jurisdiction) -
@jonny Your toots look good tho. Just had a look at it (I'm german) and it says what you tooted
Although the "Landgericht München" probably isnt that small...
@Numerfolt @jonny does Germany have an "appeal to a higher court" kind of mechanism that would apply here?
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Its awesome how Google's defense here is "everyone knows not to believe the AI overview"
@jonny that was the same reason Fox “News” got away with defamation. Nobody with any sense is supposed to believe that they’re actually reporting real news.
Unfortunately people do.
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@wronglang
Its hard to be exposed to liability constantly to everyone in the entire EU (they make an international claim of jurisdiction)@jonny well that's something
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Im not a lawyer but a lot of what "AI" does seems like it would be uh illegal or at least disastrously bad from a risk management POV. tight race between financing or insurance for what will precipitate the pop
https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/@jonny I like that the reporter avoided the word "hallucinate".
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Im not a lawyer but a lot of what "AI" does seems like it would be uh illegal or at least disastrously bad from a risk management POV. tight race between financing or insurance for what will precipitate the pop
https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/@jonny this is actually pretty huge. Now, the last thing we should consider is changing the ridiculous laws which have determined that Google is somehow to be personified and therefore became inexplicably capable of having 'own words'.
Blame the actual people running the company and name them all in the lawsuits, and declare that the Overviews are their collective 'own words'.
Then we'll see change.
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The judge is basically like "the basis for the entire argument that keeps search engines legal is that they are indispensable for understanding the flood of information online, and its impossible for search engines to evaluate all the context they index. If what you say about "everyone knows the AI overview is not to be trusted" is true then you are fucking cutting your own legs out from underneath you buddy boy. If the thing is not useful, your protections are even more gone"
@jonny even then less than 10~ish years ago you got multiple "link tax" laws for avoiding news aggregators to get traffic instead of the news site (https://www.businessinsider.com/spain-google-tax-2014-7).
I'm not saying it was a _good_ idea just that even the discovery benefits of aggregators can be seen as harmful by the… agregatees?
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Im not a lawyer but a lot of what "AI" does seems like it would be uh illegal or at least disastrously bad from a risk management POV. tight race between financing or insurance for what will precipitate the pop
https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/@jonny I've thought for a while now that one of the most unhinged things about this bubble is the fact that it's predicated on the assumption that every country is just going to let AI companies do crime forever.
That assumption has turned out to be more correct than I would've liked, but maybe the gears are finally turning in the right direction
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Im not a lawyer but a lot of what "AI" does seems like it would be uh illegal or at least disastrously bad from a risk management POV. tight race between financing or insurance for what will precipitate the pop
https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/@jonny I'm sure this will get bounced around courts, be subject to rants and threats from the orange pedophile-in-chief, etc, but so far I'll say well done German court.
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@Numerfolt @jonny does Germany have an "appeal to a higher court" kind of mechanism that would apply here?
@jmason @Numerfolt @jonny In general, yes - either called Berufung or Revision. Since this case relates to free speech, it might even result in a Verfassungsbeschwerde (constitutional complaint), as I understand it.
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This is like real bad for AI.
Again, fresh in-post label for I am not a lawyer and I am reading this through shockingly bad PDF machine translation.
The judge is explicitly cutting down most of the legal defenses they use. They make a sharp cut between search and AI, saying search is indispensable, but AI is not, and defendants have not proven how being held liable for their output would compromise the ability to run a normal search engine. They make a similar hard cut between AI and autocomplete.
They go on at length about the nature of truth in utterances, and arrive at a conclusion that AI output has no protections for free expression because it isn't expressing shit - it has no beliefs, it is a commercial product only. There are two injunctions that are denied because they are not considered statements of fact, but the judge rules against google for all the ones that were, and concludes several are default considered false because the linked pages were irrelevant.
There is explicit differentiation from aggregating reviews and third party content, because the AI generated text and ideas that were not present in the input. There is also discussion about how there is no excuse for further violations just because its hard to control AI output, and contrasts this with how normal "report and takedown" protections work.
There is very little here that is specific to AI overviews in search, and almost all of the arguments apply to AI products in general. AI's only prayer of being remotely profitable must include advertising or shopping features, which means they absolutely must continue generating output that makes statements of fact about other companies. I know nothing about how German courts work, the article alludes to appeals, but if this ruling holds even just in Germany the ability to insure AI products disappears overnight and that makes the product nonviable.
Edit: Germans, German speakers, and I guess by some miracle if there is a German lawyer wandering by, please feel free to correct me and I'll edit the post
@jonny Maybe would be interesting to get an opinion from @AwetTesfaiesus on this?
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Section 230 only protects you against stuff that other people say on your platform, not what you produce as a product on your platform after all
@jonny if that was totally true then Google/ Meta/others would be liable for the malware ads that make up a significant chunk of their profits. I don't understand why the law doesn't work that way.
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This is like real bad for AI.
Again, fresh in-post label for I am not a lawyer and I am reading this through shockingly bad PDF machine translation.
The judge is explicitly cutting down most of the legal defenses they use. They make a sharp cut between search and AI, saying search is indispensable, but AI is not, and defendants have not proven how being held liable for their output would compromise the ability to run a normal search engine. They make a similar hard cut between AI and autocomplete.
They go on at length about the nature of truth in utterances, and arrive at a conclusion that AI output has no protections for free expression because it isn't expressing shit - it has no beliefs, it is a commercial product only. There are two injunctions that are denied because they are not considered statements of fact, but the judge rules against google for all the ones that were, and concludes several are default considered false because the linked pages were irrelevant.
There is explicit differentiation from aggregating reviews and third party content, because the AI generated text and ideas that were not present in the input. There is also discussion about how there is no excuse for further violations just because its hard to control AI output, and contrasts this with how normal "report and takedown" protections work.
There is very little here that is specific to AI overviews in search, and almost all of the arguments apply to AI products in general. AI's only prayer of being remotely profitable must include advertising or shopping features, which means they absolutely must continue generating output that makes statements of fact about other companies. I know nothing about how German courts work, the article alludes to appeals, but if this ruling holds even just in Germany the ability to insure AI products disappears overnight and that makes the product nonviable.
Edit: Germans, German speakers, and I guess by some miracle if there is a German lawyer wandering by, please feel free to correct me and I'll edit the post
@jonny IANAGL, but we should remember that Germany follows a Civil Law legal tradition.
Which is to say, other German courts can certainly look at this precedent, but they are not necessarily bound by it. Ultimately, this will only be "settled" at the higher courts.
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@jonny Maybe would be interesting to get an opinion from @AwetTesfaiesus on this?
@betabug @jonny you are right, I in deed /am/ a lawyer and this is my area of practice (though as an MP). But being a lawyer, I can confidently say that I will not give a proper opinion on this until I‘ve read the ruling.
I imagine this has to do with the legal principle under German law that cease-and-desist claims do not require fault.
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Im not a lawyer but a lot of what "AI" does seems like it would be uh illegal or at least disastrously bad from a risk management POV. tight race between financing or insurance for what will precipitate the pop
https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/@jonny I cannot read the actual ruling, but looking at the headlines and comments on the ruling, I wonder if AI overviews are considered as a literal “words of Google” and whether that would open the door to the argument that “our own words can be copyrighted”.
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@betabug @jonny you are right, I in deed /am/ a lawyer and this is my area of practice (though as an MP). But being a lawyer, I can confidently say that I will not give a proper opinion on this until I‘ve read the ruling.
I imagine this has to do with the legal principle under German law that cease-and-desist claims do not require fault.
@betabug @jonny took a glance and think my intuition was quite correct.
Court threw out following legal defenses:
1. search provider privilege (exemption from liability for search results) and
2. “but go check yourself“.
Only applies to cease-and-desist claims for reason mentioned above (no fault required).
Not directly applicable to other liability cases (e. g. for compensation); lawyers‘ fees must be reimbursed though (often ~ 2K to 5K pre court).
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@jonny Maybe would be interesting to get an opinion from @AwetTesfaiesus on this?
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