Report from Reuters
In Brief – Germany’s media regulator has declared that AI-generated search summaries and chatbot responses produced by services such as Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity AI fall under Germany’s media laws. The Commission for Licensing and Supervision (ZAK), representing the country’s 14 state media authorities, said such outputs are created by the AI providers themselves rather than simply displaying third-party material. ZAK also said the liability protections available under the EU’s Digital Services Act for user-generated content do not apply in these circumstances. The officials further argued that AI search services could be regulated as media intermediaries because they shape users’ access to news. Google said it will appeal, arguing the decision fails to reflect changing search habits.
Context – German judicial and regulatory institutions have taken the lead in promoting liability principles that will stifle the growth of Generative AI. The media regulator’s decision comes on the heels of a ruling by the German Regional Court of Munich that Google is directly liable for erroneous statements produced by its AI Overviews feature because they constituted Google’s own content and did not enjoy the liability protection given to search engines that produce links to third-party content. The judges rejected Google’s argument that users are informed that the AI answers are not always accurate and that they should verify information on their own. That court also found that AI-generated responses deserve less free speech protection because they reflect algorithmic outputs rather than human convictions. The fact is that AI chatbots and online search are converging. This is true in the market, which is frustrating publishers as Google Search changes. But it also means that all chatbot operators will be impacted by these “search” policies because they all provide answers. And all GAI chatbots “hallucinate”, meaning they sometimes formulate responses that are completely incorrect. Hallucinations appear to be a feature of the technology. This fact has bedeviled regulators in Europe from the first months of ChatGPT.