YouTube Case Before Supreme Court May Decide AI Protections

Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube is being sued for its video recommendation practices, and the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to issue a ruling.

This case will test a law protecting technology platforms from legal responsibility for content posted by their users, but raises the question of whether this law is applicable when companies use algorithms to target users with recommendations.

The implications of this decision reach beyond social media platforms and impact the growing debate over whether companies that develop generative AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT from OpenAI or Bard from Alphabet’s Google, should be safeguarded from legal claims like defamation or privacy violations.

Experts in the technology and legal fields have pointed out that the algorithms that power generative AI tools operate similarly to those used for YouTube video recommendations. Thus, the Supreme Court’s decision on whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 applies to recommendation algorithms could be significant for the liability of AI chatbots.

In February, Supreme Court justices expressed doubt over whether to weaken the protections provided by Section 230. Justice Neil Gorsuch remarked that AI tools capable of generating ‘poetry’ and ‘polemics’ would likely not be granted such legal protections.

This case is part of a broader discussion about whether Section 230 immunity should apply to AI models that are trained on vast amounts of online data but capable of creating original works.

Currently, Section 230 protections generally apply to third-party content from users of a technology platform and not to information that a company helped develop. However, it remains unclear whether the response from an AI chatbot would be covered by this law.

The case underscores the importance of establishing clear legal protections and regulation for AI technologies as they advance and become increasingly prevalent.