'Nobody needs AI to search the internet,' German court rules in Google case

A German court has issued a preliminary ruling holding Google liable for false statements generated by its AI Overviews feature, marking what is believed to be the first time a court has imposed liability on an artificial intelligence company for defamatory AI-generated content.

The case arose after two publishers found that Google's AI-generated summaries had incorrectly linked them to scams and "dubious business practices." According to the ruling, Google failed to correct the information despite receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the publishers earlier this year.

The court drew a distinction between traditional search engines and AI-generated summaries, finding that AI Overviews produce "independent, new, and substantive statements" rather than merely directing users to third-party content through links.

In its reasoning, the court rejected arguments that AI-generated summaries should receive the same liability protections as conventional search functions. The judges said AI summaries constitute an "additional function" rather than a necessary component of internet search, noting that users remain able to locate information through standard search results.

The court also determined that the disputed AI-generated statements were primarily an expression of "commercial activity" rather than protected speech. As a result, it found that the publishers' interest in removing defamatory content outweighed Google's commercial speech interests.

The ruling highlighted concerns about how users interact with AI-generated search results. The court said the usefulness of AI Overviews would be significantly diminished if users were required to independently verify every source link.

Data cited in the case underscored those concerns. A Pew survey found that most users do not click on source links, while an analysis of Google's Gemini 3 model found it produced inaccurate responses roughly 9% of the time and provided inaccurate source links 56% of the time.

The court said such findings raise broader questions about the scale of errors that AI-powered search tools may generate and the extent to which users verify the information they receive.

As part of the ruling, the court issued a temporary injunction prohibiting Google from continuing to disseminate the specific false claims at issue in the case.

The decision is not final and could have wider implications for the AI search industry if similar reasoning is adopted in other jurisdictions, potentially exposing AI companies to additional legal challenges over defamatory outputs.

Google said it was carefully reviewing the ruling. A company spokesperson said the company has invested heavily in improving AI quality and maintained that the tool is designed to reflect information already available on the web.