Google's profound contempt for journalists is on display as it rewrites publications' headlines in search results, sometimes altering the meaning and intent of the original. https://www.theverge.com/tech/896490/google-replace-news-headlines-in-search-canary-coal-mine-experiment

The company calls it an "experiment" -- as if that makes it OK.

Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines

Google is beginning to replace news headlines in its search results with ones that are AI-generated. After AI clickbait nonsense in its Google Discover news feed, it’s starting to mess with headlines in the “10 blue links” too.

The Verge

@dangillmor Oh hey, libel-as-a-service! Given that they appear to be outright pretending the headline is from the site in question with no clear "we pulled this out of a robot's ass" indicator, and they know full-well that "AI" is a bullshit fountain that doesn't even have the concept of "truth", I'd say that meets the bar of "knowingly false statements", regardless of any 'fine print' disclaimers they might try.

"it only lies 30%* of the time" is an admission, not a defense... They know it's prone to spitting out falsehoods, and have done nothing to correct it. Because nothing they can do can correct it, as the bullshit-fountain is foundational to the architecture of LLMs

* Number pulled out of my ass, not the real statistic. But the point is they know that "statistically plausible output" is not always correct output.

@becomethewaifu @dangillmor Yeah I wonder how long (how many libel lawsuits) it'll take before that gets quietly sunset.