These days, Google is shoving AI into every search result, and a German court is holding them liable for what AI says.

In a decision this week, the Regional Court of Munich ruled that Google had been spreading false claims about two Munich-based publishers.

Google’s AI overviews had falsely tied two publishing companies to scams, subscription traps, and shady business practices for certain search queries. According to the court, the AI mixed up information about other, genuinely sketchy companies with the plaintiffs and drew connections that didn’t appear in any of the linked sources. The publishers sent Google a cease-and-desist letter, but Google didn’t respond appropriately.

Google says that users know “that information generated with AI should not be blindly trusted.”  Now, I don’t know about the legalities, but I think this is a very bad look for Google.

They really can’t have it both ways.  Which is it – AI is a revolutionary technology that is going to transform every aspect of our life, or it’s a gibberish-spewing machine that can’t speak definitively about anything.

If the former is true – and that is the narrative Google has been peddling high and low – then users have a right to hold Google accountable for what its digital minions say.  If AI can’t tell two companies apart, what good is it?  That’s pretty low table stakes.  If we were searching for a cheap way to make antimatter in the basement and it didn’t know the answer, fair enough.  But to confuse two different companies and accuse an innocent one of scams and fraud…pretty lame.

The article has a great deal more of legal analysis, but fundamentally, Google has to argue that its technology doesn’t work.

raindog308

raindog308 is a longtime community LETizen, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

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