A German regional court has ruled that Google is directly liable for the content of its AI search overviews. According to the court, previous limited liability protections for search engine operators don't apply to AI overviews. In this case, Google's AI had falsely linked two publishers to fraud and made claims that didn't appear in any of the linked sources. The ruling could set a precedent for AI-generated content liability worldwide.
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.