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 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.
A German publisher’s article on the case: https://www.heise.de/en/news/LG-Munich-I-Google-ordered-to-pay-for-false-statements-in-AI-summaries-11327217.html
Because while conventional search results merely present indexed third-party content with title, snippet, and link, the AI function generates a coherent, flowing text that evaluates multiple sources and summarizes them into an independent answer. From the perspective of average users, this appears as direct information from Google, not as a mere forwarding of third-party content.
The previous, rather limited liability of search engines for third-party content is therefore not transferable to this generative format, the chamber ruled. Instead, the usual standards for defamation law apply: untrue factual claims can be prohibited without Google being able to hide behind the automated AI process. The note “created with AI” does not change the attribution to Google.
That’s really interesting. I’ve never really thought about it in this light, but a search engine’s job is generally just to point you at a bunch of information that could be what your looking for. But they don’t generate any content, so as a result they aren’t really liable or in any way responsible for what you find, they aren’t telling you anything.
But a generative AI, well those are very much their words, they don’t have any link to hide behind, they are absolutely responsible for anything their AI tells you. This explicitly exposes them to legal risk in a way that they never were before.
I hope that in the rest of the world our courts can all make similar rulings. When people search for information you should not be allowed to generate something and provide them that answer as if it were a fact, without taking responsibility for it.