Incident 45: Defamation via AutoComplete

Description: Google's autocomplete feature alongside its image search results resulted in the defamation of people and businesses.

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Alleged: Google developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Varied.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
45
Report Count
29
Incident Date
2011-04-05
Editors
Sean McGregor

CSET Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Full Description

From 2011 to 2018, Google has been sued in multiple countries on charges of defamation, as its autocomplete feature for its search engine would imply defamatory statements for businesses and people in China, Ireland, and Germany, and its image search associated an Australian man with the Melbourne criminal underworld.

Short Description

Google's autocomplete feature alongside its image search results resulted in the defamation of people and businesses.

Severity

Negligible

Harm Type

Harm to civil liberties, Other:Reputational harm/social harm (libel and defamation)

AI System Description

Google's autocomplete function in its search engine suggests keywords based on data collection of similar searches; Google Image's image classification model

System Developer

Google

Sector of Deployment

Information and communication

Relevant AI functions

Perception, Cognition, Action

AI Techniques

Machine learning, natural language processing model

AI Applications

recommendation engine, decision support, image recognition, forecasting

Location

Global

Named Entities

Google

Technology Purveyor

Google

Beginning Date

06/2011

Ending Date

06/2018

Near Miss

Unclear/unknown

Intent

Accident

Lives Lost

No

Laws Implicated

Law of defamation in Australia, EU Electronic Commerce Directive, judgment of Ribeiro PJ in Oriental Press Group Ltd & anor v Fevaworks Solutions Ltd [2013] 5 HKC 253 in Hong Kong

Data Inputs

User Google search input, photos

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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