This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
This is more important that just AI overviews and establishes that companies are responsible for the editorializing they do. That's much more important in algorithmic suggestions, which drive people into doing things they never would have done otherwise (see: Trump voters).
I hope this stands through all instances and is applied generously, because so many people have been fucked up beyond recognition by following the trail of the algorithm, especially on social and video sites.
Iv always compared it to a library vs news station.
A library collects and helps distribute information. But none of it is their own. While a news station driectly reports on and creates the information that is later catalogued.
Its why in theory a reporter and new source should be held to a very high standard, while a library could in theory be full of bad, false, or other wise misleading information.
A library can't actually do anything about it realistically on a grand scale. Sure they can ban or bar repeated known offenders. But it's a cat and mouse game. Same as a search engine. They can stop indexing people who are problems, but they have no real way to know ahead of time till it becomes a problem.
Ai on the other hand is reporting and generating direct sources by its own actions. Its no longer just indexing.
Nor should the library do something! They're in the job of archiving. The news people, that's reporting, and it better be done accurately and conscientiously.
While this is a solid ruling and establishes great precedent, it's in Germany and so likely will only eventually apply to the EU. It would be cool to see a similar decision from a US court.
If Google wants to stick with its AI push, I can't imagine they would want to keep training 2 different models; especially if one of them could land them in more hot water down the road. While it would eventually apply to the EU, I can imagine the rollout would be global. Similar to how Apple was forced by the EU to ditch their proprietary connector for USB-C: instead of having an EU & North American model; they just adapted USB-C across all their devices
I imagine the play will be to not offer AI anything in Germany and fan the flames of "we're being left behind in technology"* paranoia amongst politicians until they legislate a special carve out.
* Not my opinion, but it is a thing that the briefcase class likes to say to each other to give them an excuse to dome off big tech CEOs.
the AI makes its own claims that don't appear in any linked source, and the operator has to answer for them. [...] if it gains traction internationally, the fallout could hit not just Google but every AI provider
And that is a good thing!
We (the world) need at least some basic level of quality and truth in AI generated answers. FINALLY.
This appears to be impossible with current LLMs. You would need an actual human to verify every possible search result as the LLM is incapable of doing that for itself
appears to be impossible with current LLMs
Not the court's problem.
"Sorry, your honor, my weapon is that faulty so I can never know who it is who will be killed, but I just had to shoot because that's how I make my money..."
That's my point, the problem is the LLM itself shouldn't even be being used to begin with. I'm not defending AI bullshit by any means. I'm saying "truth" or "quality" are not qualities that an LLM will ever possess by its own nature. The ultimate solution for truth or quality is no LLMs, but I guess that ship has sailed.
Then LLMs are defective and should not be used as a replacement for web indexes or anything useful.
Yes! They are responsible. They're not quoting, they are hallucinating crap they think someone else wrote somewhere.
They'll make them click on a liability agreement every time they try to use it.
That doesn't fly everywhere in Europe
Oh woe, we just wanted to give y'all some cool and useful feature!
Just think of it, why would a greedy corporation want to give you a computation-heavy feature for free, for all your everyday searching purposes? One that would be easy to withdraw instead of fighting in courts over it.
Especially if that corporation has full control over specific results served to you on your query
This isn't final. Google has time to appeal. Let's hold off on the label "landmark" until it reaches legal effectiveness. Which it probably won't, however good a verdict by a German regional court, much less one based in Bavaria, this is in my opinion.
Google lawyers arguing in court that Google's so-called AI results are shit anyways and people should know it is chef's kiss.
I don't know where you're from, but typically within the EU, especially in countries like Germany, Google and other mega corporations from the US don't have that much sway (yet) within the justice system. I wouldn't be surprised if this is validated in the near future by more impactful courts.
Can anyone explain how the appeals system works in German courts? I have no idea how the law works in Europe, but it can't be that different from America that there's a chance this could get overturned in appeals, right?
I don't know how the German appeals system works, but there is a lot of room for difference.
A particular reading spree once caused me to learn that the UK, a modern civilized country, didn't have what we would call a supreme court until 2009.
Their laws aren't codified. We have a big book o' laws, and we pass bills that modify the book. If it's not in the book it's not a law. They pass bills that are the laws. This sounds really similar until you consider that "the law" is a collection of every act of parliament going back nearly a thousand years, many of which cancel out others. Oh, and that extends to the concept of a "constitution".
Some quick searching shows that Germany uses a fundamentally different legal model that views our big book o' laws as unstructured because courts have a binding say in interpretation of the law. It seems that this regional court can be appealed, and also that their courts don't use precedent like ours do, so an appeal is more like a second opinion than an escalation.
Judges are less referee and more investigator, so you can claim that the judge made a mistake with their decision, which is appeal.
Oh and the US and UK share what is called "common law" system as well in which decision by the courts are able to referenced as what the law is as well.
So if the legislator writes a law making apples illegal, but a court decided that wasnt true for guys named John, then when someone is charged for it they could cite the "not Johns" ruling as why it shouldn't apply to them.
