Meta and Google using user comments or reviews as part of generative AI responses to queries on restaurants or to summarise sentiment could introduce new defamation risks, experts have warned.
In Australia, when a user makes an allegedly defamatory post or review on Google or Facebook it is usually the user that faces legal action for defamation. But a landmark 2021 high court ruling in Dylan Voller’s case against news outlets – over comments on their social media pages relating to the young Indigenous man’s mistreatment in Don Dale youth detention centre – has also held that the page that hosts a defamatory comment, such as news pages on Facebook, can also be held liable.
