Ask HN: Will Microsoft be liable for defamatory Bing statements?

The point is that pre-230, no one knew who was liable for comments, and 230 clarified. The tech industry needs a law detailing who is liable, the way 230 clarified.

The AI-Generated art world seems to want the prompter to be the "artist", but if you prompt bing for search... are you the "creator"? It seems unlikely. On the other hand, Microsoft is "simply" using an algorithm to rehash the existing web.. just like search results page did before, so this is no different.

> Section 230 was about hosting user comments though.

No, 230 is not about “hosting”, its about (what would, absent Section 230, legally be) publishing.

> Microsoft, for example, can’t publish an article on Microsoft.com defaming people and cite section 230.

It absolutely can, if some other “information content provider” submitted the information in it, because they are not legally it’s publisher in that case; that is the central point of § 230. [0]

The question here seems to be what happens when the way interactive computer services relay information from other internet content providers is by farther from relaying distinct externally provided content units that may be mixed, ordered, promoted, demoted, or suppressed by an algorithm, and instead synthesizing new content units from externally provided and actively sourced information.

But the 230 safe harbor doesn’t focus on content units (by any name), it focuses on information, so as long as the defamation comea from information provided by another “information content provider”, no matter what algorithmic means and content structure goes into presenting it, it would seem squarely within the safe harbor.

When defamation arises not from a particular third-party source material, but only from the algorithmic synthesis, things get trickier, but if its all third partt information (even separate pieces of it that the algorithm presents together) it still seems within the safe harbor.

When its (in whole or in part) information Microsoft actively sourced or that the MS-operated algorithm created ex nihilo (hallucination) that makes it defamation, though, that would seem to be Microsoft’s liability.

[0] 47 USC § 230(c)(1): No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Google already does this so I assume it's in line with the law. If they get the lyrics wrong, maybe that's under fair use?

Chat with Bing has found to be given explicit instructions to not give out book passages and music lyrics. This came out the other day when someone was about to get it to say its code name (Sydney) along with it default prompt set.

Yeah, this is different.

Search is just snippets of other peoples websites. Search companies would like to see themselves as neutral. A common carrier, like the power companies.

GPT is something different. Its original speech. Not just a snippet of somebody else's speech.

Playing devil’s advocate: I guess the legal argument here could be that you wouldn’t be able to come after Logitech for making a keyboard used to publish lies. If microsoft could manage to convince a court that you could only get defamatory content out of bing by asking it to defame someone, I could see how that argument could work.

It's defamation if Joe Bloggs wants to sue. He can certainly try, but first he has to prove that Bing was actively defaming him. Alright, let's see:

- Was this content published or promoted to other people? (No)

- Was it served in accordance with US law and the license agreement (Yes)

Proving either of those wrong would take a village. Assuming you get past that, you then have to prove that it was done with malicious or defamatory itent. How do you intend on doing that? You could subpeona OpenAI for their training data, but that only works if the training data was manipulated with dishonest intent.

Sure, there are AI-specific unknowns in the legal world. Entertaining this is no more relevant than suing Microsoft for a Swastika you saw on an online Minecraft world though - you knew what you were getting into when you signed up.

  Was this content published or promoted to other people? (No)

  you then have to prove that it was done with malicious
  or defamatory itent

So I am liable when I put it on a GitHub page and add a button?

    <script>
        function reply() {
            while(1) {
                c = Math.floor(Math.random()*27));
                console.log('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz '[c])
            }
        }
    <script>
    Your question <input></input>
    <button onclick=reply()>Your Answer</button>
    Disclaimer: The answer is AI generated and might be wrong.

Which area is that from? I've been looking for some quality furniture.

Sure man it can say what it wants its just BingChat, anyone who's opinion I actually respect can't have their worldview altered by a collection of tensor GPU's.

increasingly as influence and MKultra esque government and social media programs continue to rollout, it is becoming blatantly obvious who is easily influenced and who is not. Which is exhausting, it shows just how few people really have any autonomy at all.

">disparaging comments about the amish" >How much happier he is than you