The Munich Regional Court found Google responsible for false statements generated by its AI Overviews feature, the search engine’s AI online search chatbot that generates search summaries.
Judges drew a distinction between standard search engine results and AI-generated summaries, ruling that AI companies themselves are responsible for the content of answers provided by AI.
The decision requires the company to prevent the dissemination of erroneous or inaccurate claims through its search engine.
The case opposed the company to two publishers who 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.
Google had denied responsibility, arguing that its automatic summary feature warns users that the information may contain errors and should be independently verified.