The interesting thing about the German court ruling against Google is not the verdict.
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The interesting thing about the German court ruling against Google is not the verdict. The fact that, if you put libel on your web site, you are liable for it even if you used a machine to automatically generate libel, should not surprise anyone who has paid attention to the law at any point in the last century or so: humans have agency, the tools that they use do not shield them from liability, no matter how obfuscating they are.
The bit I suspect will have much more impact longer term is one of the defences entered by Google's lawyers. Somewhat more verbose in the original German, but it boiled down to: Everyone knows LLMs produce nonsense, no one should ever trust the output of an LLM in any situation that matters, it's not Google's fault if people read the output of an LLM and believed it might have some connection to reality.
It's debatable whether everyone knows that, but this is now an official statement entered into the court record that at least one of the major LLM vendors knows this. And that's now an on-the-record statement made under penalty of perjury that can be entered as evidence in any court case against companies selling LLM-integrated tooling.
I suspect that this will show up in a lot of court cases over the next few years and probably have a much bigger long-term impact than the ruling. Any claim about utility made by vendors of 'AI' tools is now open to lawsuits ranging from misleading advertising to outright fraud as a result of this.
Google would probably have been much better advised to settle the case rather than enter that claim as evidence. Imagine if a car manufacturer had entered a defence against liability in case of a collision by saying 'everyone knows automobiles are impossible to operate safely on the roads and anyone who buys one should know better than to take it on the public highway'. Google's lawyers have just done the equivalent for the 'AI' industry.
EDIT: It hopefully goes without saying, but just in case: I am not a lawyer, this is commentary from someone who watches the industry with a growing sense of disgust, not legal advice.
@david_chisnall LLMs can officially be called "The Tucker Carlson of facts" -
The interesting thing about the German court ruling against Google is not the verdict. The fact that, if you put libel on your web site, you are liable for it even if you used a machine to automatically generate libel, should not surprise anyone who has paid attention to the law at any point in the last century or so: humans have agency, the tools that they use do not shield them from liability, no matter how obfuscating they are.
The bit I suspect will have much more impact longer term is one of the defences entered by Google's lawyers. Somewhat more verbose in the original German, but it boiled down to: Everyone knows LLMs produce nonsense, no one should ever trust the output of an LLM in any situation that matters, it's not Google's fault if people read the output of an LLM and believed it might have some connection to reality.
It's debatable whether everyone knows that, but this is now an official statement entered into the court record that at least one of the major LLM vendors knows this. And that's now an on-the-record statement made under penalty of perjury that can be entered as evidence in any court case against companies selling LLM-integrated tooling.
I suspect that this will show up in a lot of court cases over the next few years and probably have a much bigger long-term impact than the ruling. Any claim about utility made by vendors of 'AI' tools is now open to lawsuits ranging from misleading advertising to outright fraud as a result of this.
Google would probably have been much better advised to settle the case rather than enter that claim as evidence. Imagine if a car manufacturer had entered a defence against liability in case of a collision by saying 'everyone knows automobiles are impossible to operate safely on the roads and anyone who buys one should know better than to take it on the public highway'. Google's lawyers have just done the equivalent for the 'AI' industry.
EDIT: It hopefully goes without saying, but just in case: I am not a lawyer, this is commentary from someone who watches the industry with a growing sense of disgust, not legal advice.
@david_chisnall is it possible that the additional seemingly unnecessary claim has been made deliberately as a form of sabotage?
Other questions: Does this ruling only affect the summary? If so, is it only in the sense that it has appeared automatically without an option? Is the 'AI mode' covered in the same sense and subject to the same ruling generally?
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The interesting thing about the German court ruling against Google is not the verdict. The fact that, if you put libel on your web site, you are liable for it even if you used a machine to automatically generate libel, should not surprise anyone who has paid attention to the law at any point in the last century or so: humans have agency, the tools that they use do not shield them from liability, no matter how obfuscating they are.
The bit I suspect will have much more impact longer term is one of the defences entered by Google's lawyers. Somewhat more verbose in the original German, but it boiled down to: Everyone knows LLMs produce nonsense, no one should ever trust the output of an LLM in any situation that matters, it's not Google's fault if people read the output of an LLM and believed it might have some connection to reality.
It's debatable whether everyone knows that, but this is now an official statement entered into the court record that at least one of the major LLM vendors knows this. And that's now an on-the-record statement made under penalty of perjury that can be entered as evidence in any court case against companies selling LLM-integrated tooling.
I suspect that this will show up in a lot of court cases over the next few years and probably have a much bigger long-term impact than the ruling. Any claim about utility made by vendors of 'AI' tools is now open to lawsuits ranging from misleading advertising to outright fraud as a result of this.
Google would probably have been much better advised to settle the case rather than enter that claim as evidence. Imagine if a car manufacturer had entered a defence against liability in case of a collision by saying 'everyone knows automobiles are impossible to operate safely on the roads and anyone who buys one should know better than to take it on the public highway'. Google's lawyers have just done the equivalent for the 'AI' industry.
EDIT: It hopefully goes without saying, but just in case: I am not a lawyer, this is commentary from someone who watches the industry with a growing sense of disgust, not legal advice.
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@david_chisnall quite frankliy, I wonder why they did it. I mean it's good for humanity but over the last years, google has demonstrated that that's a scale they don't particularly care for.
@DJGummikuh @david_chisnall Wouldn't it be awesome to find out their lawyers used AI to draft the brief?? LOL
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The interesting thing about the German court ruling against Google is not the verdict. The fact that, if you put libel on your web site, you are liable for it even if you used a machine to automatically generate libel, should not surprise anyone who has paid attention to the law at any point in the last century or so: humans have agency, the tools that they use do not shield them from liability, no matter how obfuscating they are.
The bit I suspect will have much more impact longer term is one of the defences entered by Google's lawyers. Somewhat more verbose in the original German, but it boiled down to: Everyone knows LLMs produce nonsense, no one should ever trust the output of an LLM in any situation that matters, it's not Google's fault if people read the output of an LLM and believed it might have some connection to reality.
It's debatable whether everyone knows that, but this is now an official statement entered into the court record that at least one of the major LLM vendors knows this. And that's now an on-the-record statement made under penalty of perjury that can be entered as evidence in any court case against companies selling LLM-integrated tooling.
I suspect that this will show up in a lot of court cases over the next few years and probably have a much bigger long-term impact than the ruling. Any claim about utility made by vendors of 'AI' tools is now open to lawsuits ranging from misleading advertising to outright fraud as a result of this.
Google would probably have been much better advised to settle the case rather than enter that claim as evidence. Imagine if a car manufacturer had entered a defence against liability in case of a collision by saying 'everyone knows automobiles are impossible to operate safely on the roads and anyone who buys one should know better than to take it on the public highway'. Google's lawyers have just done the equivalent for the 'AI' industry.
EDIT: It hopefully goes without saying, but just in case: I am not a lawyer, this is commentary from someone who watches the industry with a growing sense of disgust, not legal advice.
@david_chisnall Microsoft has a clause in their ToS that Copilot is for entertainment purposes only and that didn't really change things
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@david_chisnall is it possible that the additional seemingly unnecessary claim has been made deliberately as a form of sabotage?
Other questions: Does this ruling only affect the summary? If so, is it only in the sense that it has appeared automatically without an option? Is the 'AI mode' covered in the same sense and subject to the same ruling generally?
is it possible that the additional seemingly unnecessary claim has been made deliberately as a form of sabotage?
It wasn't an additional unnecessary claim, it was a core defence idea: we are not liable because no one would expect our AI summary to actually be correct.
Does this ruling only affect the summary?
It affects text that Google ads that is not a direct quote from sources. If a source indexed by a search engine contains libellous statements, that source is liable but Google as an aggregator is not for linking to it.
If so, is it only in the sense that it has appeared automatically without an option?
If the text is generated by Google, Google is liable for anything that it includes that is illegal. If the text is not generated by Google and is simply indexed by Google then there is an existing exemption that says that the existence of web indexes is a public benefit and so Google is not liable.
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@david_chisnall Microsoft has a clause in their ToS that Copilot is for entertainment purposes only and that didn't really change things
@robinsyl Yet. We'll see how well that holds up in court the first time someone loses money or reputation as a result of something Copilot does.
Fully employment for lawyers coming up!
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The interesting thing about the German court ruling against Google is not the verdict. The fact that, if you put libel on your web site, you are liable for it even if you used a machine to automatically generate libel, should not surprise anyone who has paid attention to the law at any point in the last century or so: humans have agency, the tools that they use do not shield them from liability, no matter how obfuscating they are.
The bit I suspect will have much more impact longer term is one of the defences entered by Google's lawyers. Somewhat more verbose in the original German, but it boiled down to: Everyone knows LLMs produce nonsense, no one should ever trust the output of an LLM in any situation that matters, it's not Google's fault if people read the output of an LLM and believed it might have some connection to reality.
It's debatable whether everyone knows that, but this is now an official statement entered into the court record that at least one of the major LLM vendors knows this. And that's now an on-the-record statement made under penalty of perjury that can be entered as evidence in any court case against companies selling LLM-integrated tooling.
I suspect that this will show up in a lot of court cases over the next few years and probably have a much bigger long-term impact than the ruling. Any claim about utility made by vendors of 'AI' tools is now open to lawsuits ranging from misleading advertising to outright fraud as a result of this.
Google would probably have been much better advised to settle the case rather than enter that claim as evidence. Imagine if a car manufacturer had entered a defence against liability in case of a collision by saying 'everyone knows automobiles are impossible to operate safely on the roads and anyone who buys one should know better than to take it on the public highway'. Google's lawyers have just done the equivalent for the 'AI' industry.
EDIT: It hopefully goes without saying, but just in case: I am not a lawyer, this is commentary from someone who watches the industry with a growing sense of disgust, not legal advice.
```
And that's now an on-the-record statement made under penalty of perjury that can be entered as evidence in any court case against companies selling LLM-integrated tooling.
```unless this claim is part of the judgement itself, then it's hearsay [except for circumstances which restrict your `in any court case` clause immensely] and can't be referred to
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```
And that's now an on-the-record statement made under penalty of perjury that can be entered as evidence in any court case against companies selling LLM-integrated tooling.
```unless this claim is part of the judgement itself, then it's hearsay [except for circumstances which restrict your `in any court case` clause immensely] and can't be referred to
@david_chisnall admittedly, the above is my reading from Ireland, a “commonwealth” non-jurisprudence jurisdiction, dunno what's the implication for Germany/Portugal/France/countries with sensible law systems not based on precedent
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@DJGummikuh @david_chisnall "Google's lawyers" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here! As is always the case, there will be mutiple different law firms working for Google in different legal systems and jurisdictions, with different understandings of their customer's priorities and needs. Obviously somebody drafting that submission didn't realize that Google is an AI firm first, not an advertising firm or a search firm, and they were undermining their customers' highest priority.
@cstross @DJGummikuh @david_chisnall
Meanwhile in the guitar world, Fender Guitars’ lawyers and upper management are commiting brand suicide.Is there a reason these cases are being tried in German courts?
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The interesting thing about the German court ruling against Google is not the verdict. The fact that, if you put libel on your web site, you are liable for it even if you used a machine to automatically generate libel, should not surprise anyone who has paid attention to the law at any point in the last century or so: humans have agency, the tools that they use do not shield them from liability, no matter how obfuscating they are.
The bit I suspect will have much more impact longer term is one of the defences entered by Google's lawyers. Somewhat more verbose in the original German, but it boiled down to: Everyone knows LLMs produce nonsense, no one should ever trust the output of an LLM in any situation that matters, it's not Google's fault if people read the output of an LLM and believed it might have some connection to reality.
It's debatable whether everyone knows that, but this is now an official statement entered into the court record that at least one of the major LLM vendors knows this. And that's now an on-the-record statement made under penalty of perjury that can be entered as evidence in any court case against companies selling LLM-integrated tooling.
I suspect that this will show up in a lot of court cases over the next few years and probably have a much bigger long-term impact than the ruling. Any claim about utility made by vendors of 'AI' tools is now open to lawsuits ranging from misleading advertising to outright fraud as a result of this.
Google would probably have been much better advised to settle the case rather than enter that claim as evidence. Imagine if a car manufacturer had entered a defence against liability in case of a collision by saying 'everyone knows automobiles are impossible to operate safely on the roads and anyone who buys one should know better than to take it on the public highway'. Google's lawyers have just done the equivalent for the 'AI' industry.
EDIT: It hopefully goes without saying, but just in case: I am not a lawyer, this is commentary from someone who watches the industry with a growing sense of disgust, not legal advice.
@david_chisnall
Everyone knows LLMs produce nonsense, no one should ever trust the output of an LLM in any situation that matters, it's not Google's fault if people read the output of an LLM and believed it might have some connection to reality.Everyone knows Fox News produce nonsense, no one should ever trust the output of an entertainment corp in any situation that matters, it's not Fox's fault if people hear the words of talking head and believed it might have some connection to reality.
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@jernej__s @david_chisnall I have a friend who uses Google's AI overview to ask for health-related information, and I can't convince her to stop, because it's just so damn convenient. Google's AI overview can't die soon enough.
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@TallSimon @david_chisnall Can you elaborate on your suspicions?
Very interesting stuff@absolutelydefinitely @david_chisnall
I have very little except general chatter by Silicon Valley folks that seems to confirm that there is an assumption of immunity under CDA §230 for almost anything firms do. So far, Facebook and Twitter have gotten off the hook, even though they recommend and monetize the communication for which they are supposed to be just the medium.
has ruled similarly to 
lately on a chatbot liability case (see this thread).https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren/116596190375649692
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The interesting thing about the German court ruling against Google is not the verdict. The fact that, if you put libel on your web site, you are liable for it even if you used a machine to automatically generate libel, should not surprise anyone who has paid attention to the law at any point in the last century or so: humans have agency, the tools that they use do not shield them from liability, no matter how obfuscating they are.
The bit I suspect will have much more impact longer term is one of the defences entered by Google's lawyers. Somewhat more verbose in the original German, but it boiled down to: Everyone knows LLMs produce nonsense, no one should ever trust the output of an LLM in any situation that matters, it's not Google's fault if people read the output of an LLM and believed it might have some connection to reality.
It's debatable whether everyone knows that, but this is now an official statement entered into the court record that at least one of the major LLM vendors knows this. And that's now an on-the-record statement made under penalty of perjury that can be entered as evidence in any court case against companies selling LLM-integrated tooling.
I suspect that this will show up in a lot of court cases over the next few years and probably have a much bigger long-term impact than the ruling. Any claim about utility made by vendors of 'AI' tools is now open to lawsuits ranging from misleading advertising to outright fraud as a result of this.
Google would probably have been much better advised to settle the case rather than enter that claim as evidence. Imagine if a car manufacturer had entered a defence against liability in case of a collision by saying 'everyone knows automobiles are impossible to operate safely on the roads and anyone who buys one should know better than to take it on the public highway'. Google's lawyers have just done the equivalent for the 'AI' industry.
EDIT: It hopefully goes without saying, but just in case: I am not a lawyer, this is commentary from someone who watches the industry with a growing sense of disgust, not legal advice.
@david_chisnall libel, a good first. next up: stalking.
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@DJGummikuh @david_chisnall "Google's lawyers" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here! As is always the case, there will be mutiple different law firms working for Google in different legal systems and jurisdictions, with different understandings of their customer's priorities and needs. Obviously somebody drafting that submission didn't realize that Google is an AI firm first, not an advertising firm or a search firm, and they were undermining their customers' highest priority.
@cstross @DJGummikuh @david_chisnall
Google is heavily influenced by its investors.
Folks like murderous petrostate despots & MAGA oil oligarchs.
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/26/nx-s1-5761206/how-saudi-arabia-shaped-silicon-valleyPeople like Chris Hohn.
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/billionaire-hohn-more-google-layoffs-17736530.phpThe oil industry is flooding tech with cash for its own agenda.
Dismantling the EU. Automated fascist propaganda. Stopping climate action. Enriching Putin & #PrinceBonesaw
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2618560/saudi-arabia -
is it possible that the additional seemingly unnecessary claim has been made deliberately as a form of sabotage?
It wasn't an additional unnecessary claim, it was a core defence idea: we are not liable because no one would expect our AI summary to actually be correct.
Does this ruling only affect the summary?
It affects text that Google ads that is not a direct quote from sources. If a source indexed by a search engine contains libellous statements, that source is liable but Google as an aggregator is not for linking to it.
If so, is it only in the sense that it has appeared automatically without an option?
If the text is generated by Google, Google is liable for anything that it includes that is illegal. If the text is not generated by Google and is simply indexed by Google then there is an existing exemption that says that the existence of web indexes is a public benefit and so Google is not liable.
@david_chisnall that's absolutely fascinating, the argument is somehow that it is a work of complete fiction which is derived from non-fictional sources(assumed). I guess we are back to the impossibility of validation. Does this stop them cold? Or do we have to wait until other countries test the same case.
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The interesting thing about the German court ruling against Google is not the verdict. The fact that, if you put libel on your web site, you are liable for it even if you used a machine to automatically generate libel, should not surprise anyone who has paid attention to the law at any point in the last century or so: humans have agency, the tools that they use do not shield them from liability, no matter how obfuscating they are.
The bit I suspect will have much more impact longer term is one of the defences entered by Google's lawyers. Somewhat more verbose in the original German, but it boiled down to: Everyone knows LLMs produce nonsense, no one should ever trust the output of an LLM in any situation that matters, it's not Google's fault if people read the output of an LLM and believed it might have some connection to reality.
It's debatable whether everyone knows that, but this is now an official statement entered into the court record that at least one of the major LLM vendors knows this. And that's now an on-the-record statement made under penalty of perjury that can be entered as evidence in any court case against companies selling LLM-integrated tooling.
I suspect that this will show up in a lot of court cases over the next few years and probably have a much bigger long-term impact than the ruling. Any claim about utility made by vendors of 'AI' tools is now open to lawsuits ranging from misleading advertising to outright fraud as a result of this.
Google would probably have been much better advised to settle the case rather than enter that claim as evidence. Imagine if a car manufacturer had entered a defence against liability in case of a collision by saying 'everyone knows automobiles are impossible to operate safely on the roads and anyone who buys one should know better than to take it on the public highway'. Google's lawyers have just done the equivalent for the 'AI' industry.
EDIT: It hopefully goes without saying, but just in case: I am not a lawyer, this is commentary from someone who watches the industry with a growing sense of disgust, not legal advice.
@david_chisnall The FoX News defense.
Not all Germans will be familiar with it. This was tried in the USA and it worked. FoX News argued that they are an entertainment company and nobody with any intelligence thinks otherwise or believes anything put forth on any of their shows. This got them out of some thing or other...don't recall that part. Do believe it had something to do with liable and one Glen Beck, a person famous for putting children in walls.
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The interesting thing about the German court ruling against Google is not the verdict. The fact that, if you put libel on your web site, you are liable for it even if you used a machine to automatically generate libel, should not surprise anyone who has paid attention to the law at any point in the last century or so: humans have agency, the tools that they use do not shield them from liability, no matter how obfuscating they are.
The bit I suspect will have much more impact longer term is one of the defences entered by Google's lawyers. Somewhat more verbose in the original German, but it boiled down to: Everyone knows LLMs produce nonsense, no one should ever trust the output of an LLM in any situation that matters, it's not Google's fault if people read the output of an LLM and believed it might have some connection to reality.
It's debatable whether everyone knows that, but this is now an official statement entered into the court record that at least one of the major LLM vendors knows this. And that's now an on-the-record statement made under penalty of perjury that can be entered as evidence in any court case against companies selling LLM-integrated tooling.
I suspect that this will show up in a lot of court cases over the next few years and probably have a much bigger long-term impact than the ruling. Any claim about utility made by vendors of 'AI' tools is now open to lawsuits ranging from misleading advertising to outright fraud as a result of this.
Google would probably have been much better advised to settle the case rather than enter that claim as evidence. Imagine if a car manufacturer had entered a defence against liability in case of a collision by saying 'everyone knows automobiles are impossible to operate safely on the roads and anyone who buys one should know better than to take it on the public highway'. Google's lawyers have just done the equivalent for the 'AI' industry.
EDIT: It hopefully goes without saying, but just in case: I am not a lawyer, this is commentary from someone who watches the industry with a growing sense of disgust, not legal advice.
@david_chisnall Google is just one of the many big tech companies that I have become disillusioned with. Gemini will literally lie to you and then gaslight you about lying to you. Creating an AI with the sole purpose of being "likable" based on RLHF was never a good idea. It will LITERALLY lie and make crap up just to "sound informed," without actually providing any factual information.
When you do ask it to teach you something beneficial, such as topics that are STEM related like ethical hacking, it will tell you "this is unethical and I can't help you with this" knowing damn well that real threat actors aren't relying on their app to craft precision engineered payloads or that script kiddies aren't going to spend an hour debugging a payload that is only going to work in a vuln-by-design sandbox. It has "this is just to generate revenue" written all over it.
"Just in: a script kiddie sends an unobfuscated payload to port 1337 for several fortune 500 companies, goes completely undetected, and now the authorities can't track them down." - said nobody ever
There's so much good that could come from such powerful tools and they are literally choosing to run us into the ground with them. It's covert warfare against us IMO.
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@david_chisnall It's like when Microsoft said Copilot was for entertainment purposes only and everybody immediately stopped using it for serious applications... wait, no, they didn't.
AI boosters are just gonna rationalize it as "well they HAD TO say that, it was just a court strategy, they don't really MEAN it" and nothing's gonna change.
@ratsnakegames @david_chisnall
The point being made wasn't that AI boosters will or will not be convinced, the point being made is that there is now legally un-retractable evidence that Google is liable for fraud if they advertise LLMs as accurate and someone buys into the advertisement and Bad Things Happen. The "someone" can, after the fact, sue them for misrepresenting the capabilities etc.
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@DJGummikuh @david_chisnall "Google's lawyers" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here! As is always the case, there will be mutiple different law firms working for Google in different legal systems and jurisdictions, with different understandings of their customer's priorities and needs. Obviously somebody drafting that submission didn't realize that Google is an AI firm first, not an advertising firm or a search firm, and they were undermining their customers' highest priority.
@cstross @DJGummikuh @david_chisnall I think it's more likely Google know their court filings are never going to hurt their public image, because the number of people whose minds might possibly be changed by them is tiny. There is not much daylight between "See! Google admit their AI is useless!" and "Google will say whatever they need to to win a case, just like every other corporation out there."
