A German court has ruled that Google is directly liable for what its AI search overviews say. Previous case law shielding search engine operators from liability doesn't apply to AI overviews.

The Regional Court of Munich hit Google with a temporary injunction barring the company from spreading false claims about two Munich-based publishers through its AI-generated search overviews (case no. 26 O 869/26). The court classified Google as a direct infringer because the "AI overview" is its own content, not just a list of search results.

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 didn't appear in any of the linked sources. The publishers sent Google a cease-and-desist letter, but Google didn't respond appropriately.

AI overviews aren't search results

Google's AI overviews work nothing like traditional search results, the court argues. The AI rewrites and judges results "in its own words and according to its own structure," the ruling says. In the case at hand, for example, it opened with confident claims like "Yes, [company] is known for dubious business practices," then built its own structure with a summary, red flags for the alleged scam, and tips for users.

The court also found that the AI overview made claims "that are not even made in the search results." None of the linked sources drew any connection between the plaintiffs and the shady companies the AI mentioned. The court called these "the defendant's own statements."

Google built the AI, Google offered it to users, so Google owns what it produces, "because it alone has influence over the AI's offering and the algorithms with which the AI operates."

Search engine liability rules don't apply to AI "search"

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 doesn't 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. And only Google can check those statements, the court said, "at least by comparing the underlying third-party websites with its own statements based on them."

The court also noted that the AI overview is "by no means absolutely necessary" for using the internet. Traditional search results already help users sort through information, the AI overview is just an extra feature.

Google's "users can check for themselves" defense falls flat

At the hearing, Google argued that users could check the linked sources themselves to verify whether the AI summary was correct. Users generally knew "that information generated with AI should not be blindly trusted," the company claimed. That's a remarkable statement given the scale at which Google serves AI overviews. It's also not entirely true, since the connection between sources and generated content isn't always there.

The court rejected this. The possibility of disproving a statement through further research doesn't "regularly exempt from liability for this statement." The AI overview was "understandable on its own" and contained "a self-contained statement with independently understandable content and no reference to other possible interpretations or even unreliable content." Studies show that users almost never click on sources in AI overviews, which supports the court's reasoning.

The court drew a parallel to press law, where publishers are liable for teasers that are understandable on their own, even if readers never read the full article. Google's own argument would also "significantly diminish" the benefit of the feature, the court noted, if the overview were "generally recognized as unreliable."

The court also pointed to a protection gap. If Google were only liable for obvious violations, victims would have no real legal recourse when the AI makes false claims. The third parties whose websites served as sources hadn't even made the statements in question. So victims couldn't sue the sources, and under existing rules they couldn't effectively sue Google either.

As a result, Google couldn't invoke host provider protections under the Digital Services Act or fall back on the standard notice-and-take-down process for search engines.

AI-generated opinions get less free speech protection

As if the rest wasn't bad enough for Google, the court also went after free speech protection for AI-generated content. An AI's opinion is "not the expression of an acquired conviction of the persons expressing it, but the result of an algorithm," the court wrote.

Offering AI-powered research is "above all an expression of Google's business activities" and "at most a secondary expression of an interest in being able to freely express one's opinion and beliefs."

When weighing the plaintiffs' privacy rights against Google's interests, Google had to take a back seat, especially since the challenged statements were based on untrue facts. The AI had linked the plaintiffs to companies that, according to sworn affidavits, had no connection to them whatsoever.

Google picks up 80 percent of the legal tab

The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on most counts. It banned claims about scams, connections to dubious companies, subscription traps, phone calls that never happened, and lack of availability. Only two minor requests got denied.

The risk of repeated violations remained, even though the specific texts were no longer being displayed. Google hadn't issued a cease-and-desist declaration with a penalty clause, and nothing stopped the algorithms from generating the same statements again. Google covers 80 percent of the legal costs; the plaintiffs pay 10 percent each.

The ruling may also have international reach, according to the court.

Even a 91 percent accuracy rate means millions of wrong answers

The Munich ruling goes far beyond this one case. An analysis by AI startup Oumi for the New York Times found that Google's AI Overviews with the current Gemini 3 model answered correctly 91 percent of the time.

That's solid enough for everyday use by most people. But at Google's scale, it still means millions of wrong answers every hour. If enough of that wrong content defames companies or individuals, it could become a serious legal problem not just for Google but for other providers of similar services like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity.

The Oumi analysis also found that 56 percent of the correct Gemini 3 answers couldn't be backed up by the sources Google linked. The AI is giving answers whose origins users can't trace.

The Munich court tackled exactly this problem: the AI makes its own claims that don't appear in any linked source, and the operator has to answer for them. Whether this reasoning holds up on appeal remains to be seen, and Google hasn't commented on the ruling. But if it gains traction internationally, the fallout could hit not just Google but every AI provider whose systems paraphrase content from the web.