German court rules Google liable for false AI search answers

A German court has ruled that Google is directly liable for false and defamatory claims made by its AI Overviews feature in search results. Matthias Bastian reports for The Decoder that the Regional Court of Munich issued a temporary injunction against Google after its AI-generated summaries falsely linked two Munich-based publishers to scams and dubious business practices.

The court found that the AI had mixed up the plaintiffs with other companies and made claims that did not appear in any of the linked sources. The publishers sent Google a cease-and-desist letter, but Google did not respond appropriately.

AI Overviews are Google’s own words

The central finding of the ruling is that AI Overviews do not work like traditional search results. A conventional search engine points users to third-party websites. AI Overviews, the court argued, generate independent statements by evaluating and combining content from multiple sources. Because Google alone controls the algorithms behind the feature, the court classified the output as Google’s own content, making the company a direct infringer rather than a mere intermediary.

The court rejected Google’s argument that users could verify AI summaries by checking the linked sources. The AI overview was “understandable on its own,” the court wrote, and contained no indication that its content might be unreliable. Studies show that users almost never click on sources in AI Overviews.

Scale makes the accuracy problem serious

The ruling has implications beyond this single case. An analysis by AI startup Oumi found that Google’s AI Overviews answer correctly 91 percent of the time. At Google’s scale, however, that still means millions of wrong answers every hour. The same analysis found that 56 percent of correct answers could not be traced back to the sources Google linked.

The court also ruled that AI-generated opinions receive less free speech protection than human expression, because they reflect an algorithm rather than a personal conviction. Google covers 80 percent of the legal costs. Whether the ruling holds on appeal remains open, and Google has not commented.