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.
I mean yeah? This is the only way to square the circle. Same as if you buy a thing from amazon, it does not matter what they try to pull in the back you went and bought a thing from a place. If you google a thing and google shows a wrong (and often plain dangerous) answer then yeah, that counts as google! Maybe if they did not also try and fake the result being true they could have an argument.
And there is already precedence for this as a few nation’s courts have found that a company is bound by promises made by their own AI agents that it empowers to answer customers. This is just the same idea but for search. I hope it goes though all the German courts and is picked up in other places.