204
Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers
(the-decoder.com)
A German court has ruled that Google is directly liable for what its AI search overviews say. Previous case law shielding search engine operators from liability doesn't apply to AI overviews.
It's not about that, fines are part of doing business and large corporations will often leverage certain regulations to capture larger swaths of a market because only they can afford the fines.
If it's a $5 fine for every reported bad response, Google can just eat that while literally anyone else is suddenly instantly put out of business.
Same with the age verification stuff. They aren't planning on actually making things safer, just collecting data and paying the fines for not doing the things they're supposed to do.
It's not a fine, it's legal liability for whatever the LLM says. The linked article is about a defamation lawsuit Google lost because the LLM hallucinated sources. If this becomes a precedent case, it could lead to people specifically getting the search overview AI to hallucinate something so they can sue Google for free money.
The main reason I think this could kill AI search overview is because it's just not a core feature. Google doesn't need it. Could they afford all the legal fees this would cost them? Probably. But they could also just get rid of it without losing any of their marketshare.