By: Dwight Links
Three developments on the uses of artificial intelligence (AI) and the proponents aiming to make it the epicentre of our lives were dealt major blows in the advertisement of what AI can be.
Three court cases, from the legal realms of three major economies unveiled the soft underbelly of the AI propaganda.
A Bavarian court in Germany ruled on what slander or libel is in search results of Google’s AI search, when two Munich-based publishing companies sued the tech giant.
In China, there have been more legal filings following a case in May where the Chinese court system ruled in favour of an employee of a technology company who was fired through use of AI.
Additionally, a court in Mississippi threw out both parties to a dispute over “hallucinatory citations” in case law.
These three scenarios all speak to something concerning about a technology seriously wrong and weird about a technology that everyone is clearly not sure about its future with us.
For now, let us put the ecological costs of AI’s physical infrastructure to one side, and only zoom in on the world of Man – which has rules, laws and human interaction central to it.
LEGALITY
First to Germany. Google lost a case of false claims of websites shown in the Google AI Overview summary.
These websites were incorrectly described by the AI overview summary as scamming people, or being affiliated to nefarious activities and actors.
Google targets that it cannot be held liable for its own search interpretation by its AI, as it currently enjoys such immunity under a different legal principle for when its search results are interpreted by the human user.
The court swatted this argument to the side as the judge told Google its AI overview summary is something completely different from the website content that a company places on its webpages.
Secondly, the actual search interpretations from the AI overview summary was ruled to be directly controlled by Google and not the mistake of a user.
On to Mississippi. A judge threw out a case based on a dispute between a lawyer and the Municipality of Aberdeen.
Why? Both legal counsels had submitted their legal briefs to the judge, and the judge discovered that both documents of arguments were based on fictional case law and citations. Here’s the judge’s own ruling:
“The court was unable to locate certain legal authorities cited within them. Specifically, the court determined that [several] filings contained hallucinatory citations.”
The two lawyers were barred from appearing in the North Mississippi district court jurisdiction based on these errors as punishment. Both camps failed to review their legal briefs before submitting them to the judge in November 2025.
Finally, China. Back in May, a former employee won a case against his former employer over what you can say is unjust dismissal.
The matter happened in Hangzhou, where the employee refused to accept a demotion and pay cut. And was then threatened with the AI programs taking their job.
The court’s ruling was that replacing the worker based only on cost management was not legal grounds to replace or fire them.
This ruling in China has led to a reported surge in legal filings of employees who feel wronged by their former employers.
DESTINATION?
Well, the outcomes for the short term are clear. The courts and laws of a country will always have the final say. Regardless of whether an AI proponent is adamant humans can be replaced or not.
In Namibia, or in Africa altogether, we have not seen such large scale indications of the law coming down on employers or on the governments permitting AI tests.
Africa always remains as the ‘sitting on the fence’ participant. Always watching and wanting, but never actively pursuing or owning the participation.
For example in Namibia, most of the contacts on Whatsapp have either used the same AI advertisement poster generation tool, as everyone’s poster or message is identical to the next.
Whether it is MSME goods on offer, an alert message of an event or even to be funny or informative, the true potential of AI tools in Africa has not gone on display yet.
As long as the necessary frameworks do not exist, these kinds of court cases will happen on a regular basis until legal bodies draft and implement such frameworks.
