Google should not be publishing a statement that they haven't verified. This is different to listing search results links, they are the ones publishing the content here.
A journalist could not make up a harmful statement about someone and get away by saying the readers should have all read the sources. AI companies want to take all the benefits and profits, while holding none of the liability and responsibility for the harms they are causing.
"A journalist could not make up a harmful statement about someone and get away by saying the readers should have all read the sources."
Journalists do that all the time. We even have a whole collection of words to describe it. Muckraking for instance is probably about 100 years old. Its even in the Google auto-complete in the browser I am posting from.
Notice the “get away with” part. Journalists can be held liable for making things up. And so should Google.
They aren't really held accountable in any way for this type of stuff.