The Google logo. Image: Google LLC / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (trademark), cropped Google’s AI search told users that an Aachen doctor had been convicted of a sex crime. The conviction belonged to a different man, and on September 24 the Aachen Regional Court banned Google from repeating it, ruling that the company answers for what its AI Mode says. It is the second German court this year to treat Google’s AI answers as Google’s own words, and the first ruling to say so has now been settled rather than tested on appeal.
A doctor, a stranger’s conviction and a refused takedown #
The man who went to court is a professor and former head of a neuroradiology clinic. According to the court’s order, Google’s AI Mode answered searches about him with a detailed story: that he had been suspended in February 2024 over an accusation from his secretary, convicted of sexual coercion in March 2026 with a suspended sentence, and paid off in a six-figure labour court settlement. The court accepted his sworn statement that every part of it concerned another former university professor, and added that it knew this itself, because the criminal case it was citing had been brought against someone else.
The doctor asked Google to delete the text on August 28 and followed up with a formal legal warning on September 15. Neither worked. The court’s 8th civil chamber then acted without hearing Google first, citing the urgency of false claims that were “publicly visible” to an unlimited audience. Google Ireland, which runs Google Search in the EU, now faces a fine of up to €250,000 for each breach, or detention of its managers, if it repeats three versions of the text. Google can still challenge the order.
The court’s reasoning is blunt: Google “provides AI-generated search and is therefore also responsible for the answers generated in this context.” It added that checking would have been easy: had Google “confronted its own AI” with the doctor’s objections, it would have found the statements were false.
Munich went first #
That reasoning comes almost word for word from Munich. On May 28 the Munich Regional Court I ruled (case 26 O 869/26) on AI Overviews that told searchers two Munich publishing companies were “known for dubious business practices”, ran subscription traps and kept changing their names to avoid being traced. None of the linked sources said that; the first one cited did not mention the companies at all.
Google argued that it was only summarising other people’s pages, the same defence that has long protected search engines in Germany. The court disagreed. AI Overviews, it said, do not just show links but make “independent, new and substantive statements” built by evaluating and combining third-party sites, so Google must treat them as its own, including as the provider of an AI system under the EU’s AI Act. “Only it has influence over the AI,” the judges wrote.
Google said at the time it would appeal. That appeal has ended in a settlement, The Decoder reported on Saturday; the terms are not known and neither Google nor the publishers would comment. The upshot is that no higher court has ruled, so the Munich judgment is not binding precedent, but lower courts such as Aachen are already following it.
“A neutral intermediary” #
Not every German court agrees. In June the Berlin Regional Court II threw out a trademark claim by the perfume company Coty over AI Overviews and AI Mode answers listing “scent twins” of its brands, finding that users see the features as an extended form of search results summarising other people’s content. Google’s lawyer in that case said:
The Berlin Regional Court confirms that, despite the use of AI, Google remains a neutral intermediary and does not become a provider of its own content.
Jörg Wimmers, partner at Taylor Wessing and Google’s counsel
The Berlin case was about trademarks rather than false claims about people, and the Munich and Aachen judges did not have to deal with it. But the split shows the question is far from settled in Germany’s courts.
The picture in the US is different again: a federal judge dismissed the publishers’ lawsuits over AI Overviews this month, though those cases were about copying, not defamation.
Why it matters #
If AI answers are Google’s own statements, Google carries a publisher’s responsibility for every false claim its AI makes about a real person or company, at least in Germany, and every refused takedown request becomes evidence against it. Two courts have now said so, and by settling in Munich Google has, for now, kept the question away from a court whose ruling would bind them. Sources: Aachen Regional Court order 8 O 268/26 (PDF, German); Munich Regional Court I judgment 26 O 869/26 (PDF, German); Taylor Wessing on the Berlin ruling (German); The Decoder.