A local court in Germany has issued a ruling that could reshape the operation of search engines and artificial-intelligence-based chatbots worldwide. The Munich Regional Court preliminarily ruled that Google is liable for a series of false statements generated by its AI Overviews feature, requiring the company to prevent the dissemination of erroneous or inaccurate claims through its search engine.

The ruling stems from a case first reported by the Decoder, in which two publishers discovered that Google’s AI-generated summaries linked them, in certain searches, to questionable business practices, scams, and subscription-related frauds, without any basis for doing so.

Earlier this year, the affected companies sent the tech giant a cease-and-desist letter, according to the report. Google denied liability, arguing that its automatic summary feature warns users that the information may contain errors and should be independently verified.

The court's analysis concluded that Google’s AI combined information corresponding to other companies that had been flagged for possible illicit practices with data from the plaintiffs, generating associations that did not appear in any of the sources linked by the search engine.

The authorities found that, unlike traditional search engines, which merely display lists of links with statements made by third parties, Google’s tool produced “independent, new, and substantial statements” based on a misinterpretation of information available on the internet.

According to the court, correcting misinformation is not the responsibility of third parties. Google is the only entity with the ability to modify the technology underpinning its AI-generated summaries and, therefore, “must be held accountable.” Furthermore, the court found that Google's line of defense lacked merit, since the challenged summary “contains statements that do not appear at all in the search results.

A New (and Forceful) Interpretation of AI on the Web

The court's interpretation of AI’s role in presenting search results could make this case a historic precedent. It finds a large tech company responsible for the influence of its most advanced developments on widely used platforms.

Until now, in most legal systems, search engines have been considered tools that merely facilitate access to content created by third parties and available on the web. This status has afforded them a certain level of protection when the published information is false, inaccurate, misleading, or even defamatory.

However, the German court held that this safeguard no longer applies when search engines incorporate generative AI systems. According to its reasoning, this technology is capable of producing nonexistent claims based on multiple sources and, consequently, the companies responsible for operating it must assume liability for the resulting content.

The judges also concluded that while Google encourages users to verify information due to the potential for hallucinations inherent in AI models, this warning does not absolve the content distributor of liability. Otherwise, they argued, victims of false statements would be virtually defenseless, since the original sources never made those statements and, therefore, could not be subject to legal action.

Likewise, the court held that results generated by an AI system cannot be protected under the principles of free speech, as they are the product of an algorithm designed, trained, and managed by a company, and not the expression of an individual opinion.

As a precautionary measure to prevent possible recurrence, the ruling required Google to remove a large portion of the statements deemed defamatory in this case, and to cover 80 percent of the legal costs arising from the proceedings.

A company spokesperson, quoted by Ars Technica, suggested that the decision could be appealed. “We invest deeply in the quality of AI Overviews to ensure that the overwhelming majority of responses provide accurate information, and they are designed to reflect the information that exists on the web," the statement says. "We’re carefully reviewing this decision, which is not yet final.”