Are they going to try to make a "we're just a platform, don't shoot the messenger" section 230 argument (not sure what the equivalent in Canada is) for the AI overviews they generate? Seems like a bridge too far. Really hopeful the courts will side with Ashley MacIsaac here, and set some sane precedent.

If you build something and put it on the internet and have it doing it's thing by default then yes you need to be responsible for the consequences of releasing that. That's moral rights, and law needs to keep that intact.

Shoving unwanted experimental AI down everyone's throat is a bad idea and absolutely should have consequences.

Having AI peppered everywhere that can hallucinate or amplify damaging falsehoods is dangerous. AI results really should be something one specifically requests and not supersede search results as a default.

I also worry about the possible side effects of an overcorrection, like if AI companies embed a "Don't say any bad things ever" rule which would suppress critical perspectives.

Back when studying top-down AI in the 90s, everything we did was examined through a precautionary principal and liability was rule #1. It blows my mind how far we have moved away from those principals.

This is especially troubling from a sociological perspective, as it points to how AIs turn malice into false history.

Ashley MacIsaac made waves in the nineties for being openly gay, and he paid his dues for years. I vividly recall being around a barroom table in the late nineties, listening to this specific slander. We knew it was slander though, because there was no evidence. We had no machine yet to confabulate it.

This is what we anglos do to our men who prefer men. We did it with Wilde, and with Turing, and we did it with MacIsaac, and we are doing it even harder in 2026 than in 1996, because what we called freedom is now called "woke", and what was called dictatorship is now called "freedom".

And you're next, dear reader.

Mix up with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_MacIsaac? I think Ashley MacIsaac will have a hard time trying to proof that Alphabet wanted to cause harm and defame. Practically, without SEO, Google tends to index first sections of Wikipedia articles - and that's all. For example, many people are unlucky to have surnames of well known serial killers, and it is impossible to outplay the common nature.

US Freedom of speech will not work in Canadian courts, Google will have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, what the AI said is true. If they are smart they will settle out of court.

> Google should not have lesser liability because the defamatory statements were published by software that Google created and controls.

Therein lies the rub. Google does not control what its parrot spouts. No-one does.

For defamatory statements about public figures, "actual malice" is a necessary component of defamation. For private individuals, plaintiffs just have to prove "negligence", that Google didn't act with reasonable care before publishing. It's unclear whether courts would find negligence, but a decent lawyer would argue something like: "By explicitly stating in their disclaimer that Google knows some of the information they are publishing might be inaccurate, they are actively demonstrating that they did not verify the claims - and therefore willfully acted with reckless disregard for the truth."

This is exactly why Google's public comment on this case from the TFA is:

> "AI Overviews frequently improve to show the most helpful information, and we invest significantly in the quality of responses. When issues arise – like if our features misinterpret web content or miss some context – we use those examples to improve our systems and may take action under our policies."

Google's statement is carefully crafted to make the case that they "act with reasonable care" for legal effect, rather than to win any points in the court of public opinion. Courts have yet to determine what passes the reasonable-care test for negligence wrt AI output. Google feels they need to make sure that regardless of anything else that happens in this case, that the decision does not find their publishing was negligent.

Even if you accept that (I don't, and neither should the courts), Google controls the next hundred processing/routing/rendering/middleware steps and is fully in control of the content that makes it to the user.

Parents have to pay penalties when their underaged children burn down a building.

Companies that get treated with the rights of people should also have the responsibilities of people. Google designed, built, hosted, and promoted their LLM prominently. Logically, it follows that they should be personally and financially responsible for any harms their LLM causes.

Well "to control" means two different things: "having the ability to modify or interrupt something" and "having the willingness to exert that ability".

OP says Google has the first. You are saying Google doesn't have the second. Both of you are right in that sense. You are wrong in the sense that the second doesn't matter much here.

If I remove my hands from the wheel of my car, while it would be technically true that I was not "driving" it from that point, if I run over some pedestrian they will counter, rightfully, that the vehicle was under my control the whole time.

That’s one perspective.

It’s wrong.

But it’s definitely a perspective.

If Anthropic can implement a regular expression to monitor for user frustration, Google have certainty got the chops to have some sort of heuristic to check for strongly negative statements.

ah well, no worries then