The Global Investigations Review Guide to Compliance

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“Section 230”) protects online platforms from liability for user-generated speech. Based on the premise that platforms generally do not create original content but instead curate their users’ own speech, Section 230’s protections have historically applied to a platform’s algorithmically assembled, selected or sequenced content; algorithms or features that amplified or directed user generated speech to particular users were generally protected. Indeed, the old rule of thumb was the more a platform used algorithms or automation, the more likely user generated speech remained user generated speech. GenAI has the potential to change that calculus. A platform that ingests user generated content and publishes a transformed output, can blur Section 230’s line between publication and creation. The central question is whether Section 230 protects GenAI, which analyzes, but does not alter, user-created content to produce an outcome, and its corresponding outputs....