Google Autocomplete suggests Australian surgeon is 'bankrupt'

Australian surgeon Guy Hingston sued Google for defamation over an Autocomplete search prediction that said he was 'bankrupt' and which he reckoned cost him customers. Hingston filed the lawsuit in the US District Court in California, seeking at least USD 75,000 in damages plus court costs. He argued that he was not bankrupt and that the autocomplete suggestion showed him in a "false light". However, the situation was more complex than Hingston's claims suggested. While he was not bankrupt at the time of filing the lawsuit, he had been declared bankrupt in August 2009 due to the failure of CoastJet, an aviation company he had invested in. Additionally, court records listed Hingston and his company CoastJet Aircraft as creditors in the bankruptcy case of Eclipse Aviation. Hingston withdrew his action against Google in June 2013 without explanation. The incident highlights the potential impact of search algorithms on individuals' reputations and the ongoing debate about the accountability of search engines for their automated suggestions. Autocomplete Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In Android and iOS smartphones , this is called predictive text. Source: Wikipedia 🔗 System 🤖 Google Autocomplete Operator: Alphabet/Google Developer: Alphabet/Google Country: Australia Sector: Health Purpose: Predict search results Technology: NLP/text analysis; Deep learning; Machine learning Issue: Accountability; Accuracy/reliability; Mis/disinformation Legal, regulatory 👩🏼‍⚖️ Hingston v Google (2012)

Date it happened

2012-12-01

Organisation involved

Google

Product, system or model

Google Autocomplete

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