German court says Google is responsible for false claims generated by AI search

A regional court in Aachen has ordered Google to stop displaying three versions of AI-generated search text that falsely connected a doctor to criminal allegations and proceedings involving another person. The September 24 decision is a preliminary injunction, not a final ruling, and Google can challenge it.

The decision matters beyond the claims about the doctor: the court treated Google’s AI-generated answers as the company’s own statements, rather than simply links to material published elsewhere. It said Google was responsible for answers produced by its AI search feature, AI Mode.

The doctor, a former chief physician and professor of neuroradiology in Aachen, was alerted to the claims on August 28. In response to follow-up searches using terms including “suspension,” “termination” and “court proceedings,” AI Mode produced detailed answers describing an alleged sexual assault and a legal aftermath. According to the court, the events concerned a different former university professor, not the doctor.

The doctor asked Google to remove the material in late August. The company said in mid-September it would take no action, and the court said the disputed text was still available after a formal legal demand. Because the statements could seriously harm the doctor’s professional reputation, the court issued its order without first hearing Google. A violation could bring a fine of up to 250,000 euros per instance.

In its reasoning, the Aachen court cited a Munich Regional Court I decision from late May. That separate case involved AI Overviews falsely linking two Munich publishers to fraud schemes. The Munich judges said Google’s summaries were “independent, new, and substantive statements” based on material from third-party sites, and therefore were not merely neutral search references.

The Munich case did not produce a higher-court decision on that reasoning. Google appealed, but the dispute ended in a settlement, according to The Decoder; the terms and any payment are unknown. The Aachen order applies the Munich court’s approach in a second case, but it too remains open to challenge. The two decisions therefore indicate a recurring line of reasoning in German courts, not a final, binding ruling on Google’s liability for AI search answers.

The Aachen judges also said Google could check generated claims against the websites used to produce them, and suggested that confronting its AI with the doctor’s objections would have exposed the error. That puts the focus not only on how an answer was assembled, but on whether the company could have caught a false attribution before continuing to display it.

The broader implications remain uncertain. If higher courts ultimately treat AI-generated search answers as Google’s own content, the approach could affect disputes beyond defamation, including potential claims from publishers whose work is used to generate responses. The Aachen case does not decide those questions, and the Munich settlement left its court’s analysis without appellate review.