Google has had enough: will see copyright and Bard scammers in court

Scammers are facing lawsuits from Google. The tech giant has found a way to fight fraudsters who are filing bogus copyright claims to take down websites or offering to “download” Bard so they can infect user systems with malware. If successful, it may provide clear mechanisms and deterrents for preventing similar scams in the future.

Two groups of scammers, probably consisting of hundreds of individuals and organizations, are about to get busier with litigation after receiving claims from Google.

Google believes that lawsuits will be an effective tool for establishing a legal precedent, disrupting the tools used by scammers, and raising the consequences for bad actors.

“Today we’re taking action to protect users of Google’s Bard AI as well as against fraudsters who sought to weaponize copyright law for profit,” Google’s blog post reads.

The first group targets unsuspecting users interested in AI to spread malware.

“The fraudsters created social media pages and ran ads that encouraged people to “download” Bard, our freely available generative AI tool that does not need to be downloaded. The ads instead led people to download malware that compromised their social media accounts,” Google said in a blog post.

Since April, Google has filed roughly 300 takedowns related to this group of bad actors who misled numerous people around the world.

The search engine giant believes that it can get an order to stop scammers from setting up domains and allow them to disable them with US domain registrars.

“If this is successful, it will serve as a deterrent and provide a clear mechanism for preventing similar scams in the future,” Google said.

The second group weaponized the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). By filing fraudulent copyright notices from fake accounts, these fraudsters harm business competitors.

“Our lawsuit targets bad actors who set up dozens of Google accounts and used them to submit thousands of bogus copyright claims against their competitors. These fraudulent claims resulted in the removal of over 100,000 businesses’ websites, costing them millions of dollars and thousands of hours in lost employee time,” Google noted.

The tech giant hopes the lawsuit will deter and put an end to this activity and also raise public awareness.

The DMCA was supposed to protect internet users and copyright holders who create and share information online. To comply with DMCA, Google has a takedown process to handle legitimate complaints of copyright infringement.

“Just as AI fraudsters and copyright scammers hope to fly under the radar – we believe that appropriate legal action and working with government officials puts scammers squarely in the crosshairs of justice, promoting a safer internet for everyone.”

According to Google, Gmail blocks over 100 million phishing attempts every day, Safe Browsing protects over 5 billion devices, and Google Play scans over 100 billion apps.