A German regional court has ruled that Google is directly liable for false claims in its AI-generated search overviews, treating the content as Google's own. The court issued a temporary injunction barring the company from spreading false claims about two Munich-based publishers through its AI-generated search overviews. The ruling marks a significant shift in liability for AI-generated content, as the court classified Google as a direct infringer because the 'AI overview' is its own content, not just a list of search results.
The court found that Google's AI overviews had falsely tied two publishing companies to scams, subscription traps, and shady business practices for certain search queries. According to the court, the AI mixed up information about other, genuinely sketchy companies with the plaintiffs and drew connections 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.
The court also examined existing rulings from Germany's Federal Court of Justice (BGH), which gave traditional search engines and autocomplete limited liability. The BGH had argued that search engine operators were only liable as indirect infringers because they merely made third-party content findable. A proactive duty to check results would threaten how search engines work. The Munich court found that this reasoning does not apply to AI overviews. A regular search engine just points to outside websites, but AI overviews generate 'independent, new, and substantive statements' by evaluating and combining content from various third-party sites.
Source: thedecoder
