Do you remember Google's AI Overviews recommending adding glue to your pizza if cheese doesn't stick to it? Or saying it was fine to smoke cigarettes while pregnant? Well, a German court believes the company should be responsible for what its AI spews.

As reported by The Decoder, the Regional Court of Munich issued a temporary injunction against Google, barring it from spreading false claims about two Munich-based publishers through its AI Overviews (case no. 26 O 869/26). The court decided Google is a direct infringer because Overviews is its own content, not just a list of search results.

Apparently, AI Overviews had falsely tied two publishing companies to scams, subscription traps, and other questionable business practices. The court says that the AI mixed up information about other companies with the plaintiffs and drew connections that didn't appear in any of the linked sources. 

Overviews rewrites results "in its own words and according to its own structure," confidently stating that "[company] is known for dubious business practices" and making claims "that are not even made in the search results." 

So, the court decided that Google owns what the AI says, "because it alone has influence over the AI's offering and the algorithms with which the AI operates." It also noted that the AI feature is "by no means absolutely necessary" for using the internet, which pushes the case against Google further.

Google argued that users could check the information for themselves and they knew "that information generated with AI should not be blindly trusted," but the court rejected that view, as the ability to examine the Overviews results doesn't "regularly exempt from liability for this statement."

The court compared the case to press law, where publishers are liable for teasers that are understandable, even if readers don't read the full article. Google's argument would also "significantly diminish" the benefit of the feature if Overviews was "generally recognized as unreliable."

Finally, the court noted that if Google were only liable for obvious violations, victims would have no real legal recourse when the AI makes false claims. The "sources" of the AI's replies didn't actually say what it concluded, so victims couldn't sue either them or Google under existing laws.

Google doesn't agree with the ruling, as AI Overviews was made to "reflect" already existing information.

They also added that the feature can sometimes miss context or misinterpret web content, just like traditional search results, but the court doesn't see it this way: search finds information provided by someone else, but Overviews creates its own content, which makes Google directly liable.

This could be an important precedent in the field of AI, which is now only figuring out what laws apply to machine-made content. Do you think Google should be liable for its Overviews results?

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