Fake claims re Aus road rules on headlights generated by AI; spread on Google (www.theguardian.com)

New South Wales transport officials warned that AI-driven misinformation is helping false claims about Australian road rules spread online after a search for “Australian road rules for headlights” returned a Google “People also ask” snippet linking to a site that falsely stated drivers must keep headlights on at all times or face a $250 fine from 10 November. Transport for NSW said multiple inaccurate posts — including claims of new curfews for drivers over 60 or hefty new fines for smoking while driving — circulated despite the fact that road rules are set by each state and territory. In NSW the actual rule is that headlights must be used when driving in the dark, with a $140 fine and one demerit point. The transport secretary flagged the rise of AI as a driver of such misinformation and urged people to consult official government sources. For the AI/ML community the episode highlights how search summarization and automated content generation can amplify errors and erode trust in authoritative guidance. Key technical issues: snippets and RAG-style summarizers can surface and repackage incorrect sources without provenance; hallucination-prone models need stronger citation, source-weighting, and confidence calibration; and industry withdrawal from fact‑checking reduces external verification layers. Practical mitigations include tighter retrieval pipelines that prioritize official APIs and government sites, stricter source attribution, model auditing for hallucinations, and better user-facing uncertainty signals.