An unexpected blow.. The judiciary holds Google responsible for artificial intelligence answers technology

The Munich Regional Court in Germany issued a historic preliminary ruling against the Google search engine, holding the company responsible for incorrect answers that appear in the artificial intelligence summaries feature that the company recently introduced in its search engine, according to a report by the German “Deutsche Welle” news network.

The ruling came as a result of a case filed by two Munich-based publishing companies against Google. The two companies, including the German technology website The Decoder, accused Google that the artificial intelligence summaries linked them to questionable business practices, fraud and counterfeiting.

The two affected companies had previously sent a warning letter to Google’s management to stop displaying this information, but Google denied responsibility, arguing that it was placing a clear warning to users asking them to verify the accuracy of the information contained in the summaries feature.

The legal dispute revolved around whether the artificial intelligence summaries feature receives treatment similar to traditional search results for which Google is not responsible, or whether it deserves different treatment because it generates completely new texts and answers, as happened with the German site.

It is customary for search engine companies such as Google to not bear responsibility for the information contained in the search results and its links, whatever they may be, because their ownership goes back to the platforms that published them in the first place.

For its part, Google explained that it intends to appeal the court ruling, according to a separate report from Reuters, noting that the case focuses on specific and narrow errors and not on the basic way in which answers are displayed in the artificial intelligence glance feature.

Why is this ruling different?

The German court’s interpretation could make this case a historical precedent, the first of its kind, as the ruling places the entire legal responsibility on the company developing the artificial intelligence technologies that provide responses to users, even if the technology relies on external sources, according to what was stated in a separate report from the American technical website “Wired”.

The report states that the majority of global legal systems view search engines as indexing and archiving tools that facilitate users’ access to content created by third parties with whom the search engine has no relationship.

This situation gives search engines a unique legal shield when it comes to false, incorrect and inaccurate information, even if it is defamatory information.

But the German court sees the advantage of artificial intelligence summaries and its answers differently, as it sees them as original content generated by the company’s technologies without the interference of any external party.

The Deutsche Welle report stated that the court rejected Google’s argument that it warns users that the data received from artificial intelligence technologies is inaccurate and needs separate scrutiny on their part.

The German court described the AI ​​overview data as completely new and independent data that goes beyond mere links because the AI ​​summarizes the results in its own words and presents them in an organized form.

Global repercussions

Although the current case is only related to the German courts and Google, it may extend to the rest of the global companies operating in the artificial intelligence sector that provide technology-based chat tools, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and others.

This is because all AI tools require their users to independently verify the information and not rely on it, an argument that was rejected by the German court.

According to the Wired report, the case argues that company warnings are not enough to exempt developers from legal responsibility, and the ruling stipulates that when artificial intelligence generates new data, the company that designs and trains the model bears direct responsibility for this data.

Although the ruling is still preliminary, it may have major and influential consequences on the mechanism of work of many artificial intelligence companies around the world.