[lxgr]

Even if that were true (I don't think it is): The more important distinction between humans and LLMs is accountability.

If a customer support agent gives you incorrect information, you can often hold the company liable for it (assuming you can prove it; I suppose there's a reason for why companies prefer certain support channels over others).

If an AI "lies" to you, you're largely on your own right now.

[Majromax]

Not necessarily. In Canada, a case in February (https://www.mccarthy.ca/en/insights/blogs/techlex/moffatt-v-...) held that Air Canada could be held responsible for incorrect information about a refund given to a customer by its chatbot.

Notwithstanding differences in jurisdiction, applying that idea to this case would rely on finding that Meta owed Gaudreau a duty of care that extended to the Meta AI chatbot.

It would be more difficult to make this claim if Gaudreau had asked the question of Google, since Google itself is not usually responsible for false information uncovered by its searches.

[lxgr]

That's going to be indeed an interesting question (also discussed in this sibling thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40536860).

My gut feeling is that it should be possible for companies to distinguish an AI product (i.e. as something provided to customers like a search engine, as you say) from an AI "working for them", but I can see a lot more disclaimers showing up in Meta's various AI chat channels soon.

[markhahn]

did Meta present the AI as an official customer-service chatbot?

[lxgr]

What I see on WhatsApp:

"Messages are generated by Meta AI. Some may be inaccurate or inappropriate. Learn more."

Which leads to a pop-up further explaining that use cases include things like "creating something new like text or images".

I think it's going to be really interesting to see whether that's considered enough by courts, or if they'll take the position that these things pretend too well to be a real person to make such a disclaimer sufficient, similarly to how e.g. a brokerage can't disclaim "no investment advice" and then go on to say "but buy this stock, it's gonna moon tomorrow, trust me bro".