Local court in Germany issued a decision that could reshape the operation of search engines and chatbots based on artificial intelligence worldwide. The Munich District Court has ruled that Google is responsible for a series of false statements revealed by its AI Overviews feature, requiring the company to prevent the dissemination of erroneous or incorrect claims through its search engine.
This decision stems from a case first reported by Decoder, where two publishers discovered that Google’s AI-generated summaries linked them, in certain searches, to questionable business practices, scams, and fraud related to subscriptions, without any basis for doing so.
Earlier this year, the affected companies sent the tech giant a cease-and-desist letter, according to the report. Google has denied liability, saying its automatic summary feature warns users that information may contain errors and should be independently verified.
The court’s analysis concluded that Google’s AI combined information related to other companies that had been flagged for possible illegal activities with data from the plaintiffs, generating associations that did not appear in any sources linked to the search engine.
Authorities found that, unlike standard search engines, which simply display a list of links and statements made by outsiders, Google’s tool generated “independent, new, and large statements” based on misinterpretations of information found on the Internet.
According to the court, correcting false information is not the responsibility of third parties. Google is the only business that has the power to replace the technology that supports AI-generated summaries, and therefore, “must be held accountable.” In addition, the court found that Google’s defense lacked merit, as the challenged summary “contains statements that do not appear at all in the search results.
A New (and Powerful) Interpretation of AI on the Web
The court’s interpretation of AI’s role in presenting search results could make this case a landmark case. It acquires a major technology company responsible for the influence of its most advanced developments on widely used platforms.
Until now, in most legal systems, search engines have been considered as tools that only facilitate access to content created by third parties and available on the web. This provision afforded them some degree of protection when the information published was false, inaccurate, misleading, or even defamatory.
However, a German court said that this protection no longer applies if search engines include artificial intelligence systems. According to their thinking, this technology is able to generate claims that are not based on many sources and, as a result, the companies responsible for using it should bear legal responsibility for the resulting content.
The judges also concluded that although Google encourages users to verify information due to the falsifying power inherent in AI models, this warning does not absolve the content distributor from liability. Otherwise, they argue, victims of false statements will not be able to defend themselves, since the original sources did not make those statements and, therefore, cannot be prosecuted.
Similarly, the court concluded that the results produced by an AI system cannot be protected under the principles of free speech, as they are the product of an algorithm designed, trained, and controlled by a company, and not the expression of an individual’s opinion.
As a precautionary measure to prevent a possible recurrence, the decision required Google to remove most of the statements considered defamatory in the case, and to cover 80 percent of the legal costs arising from the trial.
A company spokesperson, quoted by Ars Technica, suggested the decision could be appealed. “We invest heavily in the quality of AI Reviews to ensure that most of the answers provide accurate information, and are designed to reflect the information available on the web,” the statement said. “We are carefully reviewing this decision, which is not yet final.”
