German court holds Google liable for false AI Overview answers

A recent study found that these recaps regularly provide incorrect information and contain facts not supported by cited sources.

A German court has ruled that Google is directly liable for incorrect information presented by its AI Overviews platform, according to a report by The Decoder . The country has laws in place that protect search engine operators from liability, but the court ruled that this doesn't apply to AI overviews. It has classified Google as a direct infringer because the AI Overview is its own content and not just a list of search results.

This all started when the company's AI overview algorithm spread false claims about two Munich-based publishers. The publishers were tied to scams, subscription traps and shady business practices via certain search queries. The court says the AI jumbled up information about totally separate companies, drawing connections that didn't appear in any linked sources and didn't actually exist.

The publishers sent Google a cease-and-desist letter, but they say it didn't respond appropriately. The Regional Court of Munich has hit Google with a temporary injunction in which it is no longer allowed to spread false information about the two companies involved in the case.

The ruling places the onus of responsibility for any factual errors on Google, as the AI Overview rewrites information "in its own words and according to its own structure." In this case, the overview confidently suggested that one of the publishers was "known for dubious business practices" and built its own structure with a summary, red flags for these shady practices and tips for users. The problem, again, is that AI Overview was actually pulling information about another entity. It even invented claims out of thin air that weren't noted in search results.

Simply put, Google the search engine wouldn't be directly liable because all it does is make third-party content findable. Google the AI Overview operator is liable because these overviews create "independent, new and substantive statements" by evaluating and combining content from third-party websites. This is pretty much what I do for work, and I certainly would be liable if I made up a bunch of slanderous stuff about a couple of publishing companies.

Google argued at the hearing that users could check the linked sources to verify if the AI summary was correct. It also said that these users knew "that information generated with AI should not be blindly trusted." That's a fairly remarkable statement given the speed in which these Gemini overviews were foisted upon us . Studies suggest that just one percent of users click on source links after reading one of these overviews.

"Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results" according to a new study by @pewresearch : https://t.co/eFGpniAP6m pic.twitter.com/812XtjqLN5