German Court Rules Google Liable for False Statements in AI Overviews

Potentially impacting all AI search engines and chatbots known to poorly paraphrase source links, a German court has ruled that Google is liable for false statements in AI Overviews.

The preliminary ruling came in a case flagged by The Decoder, where two publishers found that Google’s AI Overviews incorrectly linked them to scams and other sketchy business practices. After smearing publishers by making affirmative statements like “Yes, [it] is known for dubious business practices and is often perceived as a scam,” Google failed to correct the misleading output, even after the publishers sent a cease-and-desist letter earlier this year.

Google tried the usual arguments to shield itself from liability for false statements in AI Overviews, such as arguing that most users understand that AI outputs aren’t always accurate and must be verified.

But the court found that, unlike traditional search engines that merely present lists of links to third-party statements, Google’s tool made “independent, new, and substantive statements” based on its own misinterpretation of links on the Internet.

That’s a problem, the court said, because while publishers may have been able to sue to stop third parties from publishing defamatory statements appearing in Google search results, only Google can correct the underlying algorithm and outputs displayed in AI Overviews. And because, at least initially, the company did not, it therefore “must be held accountable,” the court ruled. Beyond that, Google’s argument was deemed particularly weak, since the AI overview in this case “contains statements that do not appear in the search results at all.”

The court’s order—requiring a temporary injunction barring Google from spreading the false claims in any further AI Overviews—may have global implications, as the court seems to be the first to hold an AI firm liable for AI speech.

In the past, AI firms have hoped that disclaimers warning about misinformation would protect them from lawsuits over untrustworthy outputs. Last year, one chatbot maker even argued that AI speech is its own category of “pure speech” and the First Amendment should protect it.

According to a Google translation of the German court ruling, however, the false outputs were “primarily an expression of the defendant’s commercial activity,” and the AI tool’s “opinions” and false statements were capable of impacting public opinion.

The court concluded that, in weighing the balance, publishers’ interest in removing the false information outweighed Google’s commercial speech rights.

AI is not necessary to search the web

Historically, any potentially harmful content surfaced by search engines has been protected from direct liability because that surfacing was considered largely unavoidable when helping users sort through an enormous tangle of information online. But the German court emphasized that AI search engines do not enjoy those same protections because AI summaries merely provide “an additional function—one without which the use of the search engine would still be (and is) possible, and without which users are perfectly capable of finding results amidst the ‘flood of data.’

In other words, nobody needs AI to search the Internet, so AI firms can’t just let their tools attribute false claims to fake sources without assuming any liability.

The court also seemed to take a dig at Google for expecting users not to “blindly trust” AI overviews, noting that the AI tool’s utility “would be significantly diminished if the ‘AI overview’ were generally regarded as unreliable and if every single displayed link required independent verification.”

It seems clear that’s not how people approach AI search tools. The Decoder noted a Pew survey last July showing most people don’t click on AI Overview source links, as well as a May analysis published by The New York Times that showed that AI Overviews with the current Gemini 3 model are inaccurate about 9 percent of the time and include inaccurate source links about 56 percent of the time.

Together, these findings suggest that Google’s AI tool may be cranking out millions of wrong answers daily, with few users verifying the information. Should other courts agree that tech firms are liable for any defamatory outputs emerging from this experimental period of AI search chaos, the biggest AI leaders could find themselves soon buried in lawsuits.

It remains unclear if Google expects to appeal or perhaps start addressing requests to fix false statements in AI Overviews more quickly following the ruling.

Google will likely fight the preliminary ruling. Asked for comment, a Google spokesperson told Ars that “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. We’re carefully reviewing this decision, which is not yet final.”

This story was updated to include a statement from Google’s spokesperson.