Google Autocomplete links French sex offender to rape

Google was ordered by the Superior Court of Paris to update its Autocomplete search term prediction function and remove links to a blog that accused 'X', an anonymous convicted sex offender, of being involved in sexually assaulting a child. Per Columbia Global Freedom of Expression , 'X' had argued that inclusion of the links violated privacy and data protection law as it named his profession and his employer alongside the accusation of involvement in child sex abuse in a way that was inadequate, unrelated, irrelevant and excessive. The man was also being automatically associated with terms such as 'rape', 'rapist', and 'satanist'. However, because the man had been appealing his conviction, Google was found to have been defaming him as French law declares individuals innocent until all appeals are exhausted. The case was seen in academic and legal circles as an example of freedom of information and potential personality interests entering into conflict. 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: France Sector: Private - individual Purpose: Predict search results Technology: NLP/text analysis; Deep learning; Machine learning Issue: Privacy; Legal Legal, regulatory 👩🏼‍⚖️ C olumbia Global Freedom of Expression. X v. Google France and Google Inc Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris 17ème chambre Jugement du 8 septembre 2010

Date it happened

2010-09-01

Organisation involved

Google

Product, system or model

Google Autocomplete

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