A collection of Xan's ramblings

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.

For all the reasons above AND ALSO because this particular lawsuit is a defamation case

Privacy lawsuits are hard because most privacy laws are super super weak, and there's very rarely a lot of money or enforcement backing privacy laws for...twenty million reasons, really...

But defamation suits? Those have teeth.

(In large part because, at least in some countries and including in the US, defamation laws protect public figures the least - and "public figures" legally includes most if not all politicians, and a hell of a lot of other rich ppl too)

A German court has ruled that Google can be held directly liable for false claims made by its AI Overviews, a decision that could put a serious legal dent in the whole “the AI made me do it” defense. According to The Next Web, the Regional Court of Munich issued a temporary injunction after Google’s AI Overviews wrongly tied two Munich publishers to scams, subscription traps, and dubious business practices. The court treated those AI-generated summaries as Google’s own statements, not just ordinary search results pointing to third-party pages. That distinction matters. Search engines have traditionally had more protection because they index and link to other people’s content. AI Overviews changes the machinery. Google is not just showing the web anymore. It is summarizing it, rewriting it, and sometimes apparently hallucinating a tiny legal grenade into the results page.

This is obviously a really complicated topic that can't just be addressed in a single list, but there are some really good tips here and they draw from some excellent leaders/activists in this area.

If this is something that you need today, I hope this list can direct you to some good resources to draw on in the future!

From the article:

Another name for Eslimi is Rumi. and Rumi is usually a part of a pattern. Get it? Nevermind

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Zoey loves blasting music while she does things around the house, she says it's the easiest way to concentrate on the repetitive tasks. More often than not, the girls end up singing along, some other times they end up talking about the songs in her playlists.

Mira and Zoey are surprised by the number of times Rumi comments a song was either written or produced by Celine. They're even more surprised to find out she has not only sold lyrics in Korea but the rest of the world as well. It soon became a thing where Mira or Zoey would ask Rumi whether the song they're listening to was written by Celine or not.

Mira is the first to realise a lot of the songs are love songs, and she starts making jokes and asking if Rumi remembers who inspired those songs. If she had a stepdad or stepmum around at some point. Rumi always insists they're not love songs since most songs are from back in the day when she was writing for Sunlight Sisters, ideas Celine discarded for her group but were worth selling later on.

One evening Zoey is blasting and singing "Jenny" by Studio Killers. Mira is sitting on the couch mumbling the lyrics, finally paying attention to them, and jokingly asks Rumi if Celine wrote that one too.

To what Rumi happily replies, "I think so, yeah! 😄"

Both Mira and Zoey stop what they're doing and look at Rumi.

"You're kidding, right?" Mira asks, then turns to Zoey. "Zoey, please stop shaking."

"What?"

"Celine wrote Jenny?"

And there's only one thing to do when that happens ;)

Over on Jeju Celine gets a phone call.