The analogy

Think of a satnav telling you to turn right where there's a wall. If you follow the directions and end up against the wall, you can't blame the satnav before a judge: the responsibility to watch the road stays with the driver. And if you're a transport company that put that satnav in the hands of its drivers without checking it, you answer for the wall.

The AI is that satnav. It points out a road with great confidence, even when the road doesn't exist. The calm and competent voice doesn't shift the responsibility: whoever is at the wheel has to look outside. The problem is that the AI errs with the same tone in which it tells the truth, and this lowers your guard precisely when you'd need to raise it.

How it really works

The AI isn't a responsible subject

On the legal plane the AI doesn't exist as a person: it owns nothing, can't be sued, doesn't pay compensation. When a responsible party is sought, it's sought among the human beings and the organizations around it. The question "whose fault is it" always translates into "which person or company acted."

If you use it, you answer

When you take information from the AI and use it — you publish it, give it to a customer, put it in a document, base a decision on it — the output becomes a statement of yours. Users are responsible for verifying the accuracy of what they produce and can't rely on the AI alone for decisions that require human judgment. Translated: the AI is a draft, not a signature. The signature you put on it.

If a company offers it, the company answers

When an organization puts an AI assistant in front of its customers, it's responsible for the information that passes through its channels, whether generated by a person or a machine makes no difference. A German court held Google responsible for the errors of the automatic summaries of the results. The defense "the user can check anyway" was rejected: you can't dump onto the customer the burden of disproving what you told them.

The disclaimer helps but isn't enough

Putting up a notice "content generated by AI, may contain errors" is useful and in many cases due. But it isn't an automatic shield. A notice buried in the terms of service, which the user didn't see before the damage, is worth little; and no notice covers you from defamatory or harmful content. It's needed in the right places and visible, not as a magic formula.

What you can do in practice

  • Verify before using, always, on the topics that weigh. Health, money, law, safety: here the error costs, and the AI doesn't replace a doctor, an accountant or a lawyer. Use the output as a trail of questions to bring to the professional, not as a final answer.
  • Ask the AI for the sources and then open them. The operational syntax:
For each factual statement in the answer, indicate the verifiable source.
If you don't have a reliable source for a statement, write "not verified" next to it
instead of inventing one.

Then actually open the links: the AI can cite sources that don't say what it attributes to them.

  • Keep proof of the verification. If you publish for work, keep where you confirmed the data from. It's what demonstrates you didn't act blindly.
  • If you offer an AI to your customers, put it to the test and warn well. Check what it answers on the delicate cases, put the notice where it's seen before use, provide a way to talk to a person. The responsibility of whoever offers the service isn't delegated to the tool.

A common misunderstanding

"The AI said it, so if it's wrong it isn't my fault." It's the exact opposite of how it works. The AI produces, the human answers. The more confident the AI's voice, the more the temptation grows to trust without checking, and that's exactly where the trouble arises. Trust isn't granted to the tone: it's granted to the verification. A confident, false output stays false, and you're the one who introduced it.

Frequently asked questions

If I use AI for work and it goes wrong, can I seek recourse against the company providing it?

Almost never for the damage you caused to third parties: the terms of service dump the responsibility for use onto the user. The company answers, if anything, toward its own direct customers. For your work toward your customers, the responsible party is you.

Is it enough to write "text generated by AI" to be in the clear?

It helps, but it doesn't close the matter. The notice must be visible before use and doesn't cover you from harmful content. On the delicate topics, verifying the content counts more than the presence of the label.

So is AI too risky for serious work?

No: it's risky if you treat it as an oracle. Treated as an assistant that prepares drafts to be verified, it reduces errors instead of increasing them. The risk isn't in the tool, it's in skipping the human check where it's needed.