Why Google is reminding users that they don’t need to ‘download’ Google Bard

Google has filed a lawsuit in California federal court against anonymous individuals it accused of marketing fake “downloads” of its artificial-intelligence chatbot Bard with the aim to install malware on victims’ computers.

In the lawsuit, Google said that the alleged scammers are misusing its trademarks with names like “Google AI” and “AIGoogleBard” to lure users into installing the malware, which the tech giant said allows the defendants to steal social-media login credentials.

Google general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado said in a statement that the scammers “misled numerous people around the world” and that the company has filed nearly 300 related takedown requests.