[Edaily Reporter Lee So-hyun] A German court has ruled that Google must bear legal responsibility for false information generated by its artificial intelligence (AI) search summary feature, “AI Overviews.” Google has decided to appeal the ruling.

This ruling is expected to have significant repercussions for generative AI search services as a whole, as it determined that AI search results can be viewed as statements generated by the platform itself, rather than as links to third-party content displayed by traditional search engines.

According to foreign media outlets such as Reuters, Google stated on the 12th (local time) regarding the Munich Regional Court’s ruling that it was liable for false claims in AI Overviews: “This case concerns specific and limited errors, not the fundamental way AI Overviews display web content.” The company added, “We disagree with the ruling and plan to appeal.”

This case stems from a lawsuit filed against Google by two Munich-based publishers. The publishers claimed that Google’s AI summaries generated false content linking them to fraud, subscription traps, and opaque business practices.

The court found that the AI summaries did not merely provide guidance on the content of existing search results or links, but rather created “independent, new, and substantive claims.”

The key issue is liability. Traditional search engines have historically been granted limited liability on the grounds that their role is to locate and link to third-party webpages. However, the Munich court ruled that, in the case of AI summaries, the algorithm does not merely display search results but combines sentences to present new answers. The court’s reasoning is that, since Google is the entity capable of influencing these outputs, it must bear responsibility for any false information in the AI summaries.

Google argued that users are aware that AI-generated results may contain errors and that AI summaries are part of a search function that organizes and presents information based on web content. However, the court rejected this argument, noting that the AI summary in question contained content that did not appear directly in any existing search results.

The court ordered Google to cease disseminating false information and to bear 80% of the litigation costs. While this ruling is a preliminary injunction and not a final judgment, if the same principle is upheld on appeal, it could set a precedent for expanding the scope of liability for AI search service providers.

This case comes amid growing regulatory pressure in Europe surrounding Google’s AI search features. Last December, the European Commission launched an investigation into whether Google violated competition laws by using publishers’ content in its AI search features and AI model development. In February of this year, the European Publishers Council also filed an antitrust complaint with the EU, citing concerns over AI summaries and AI mode.

The controversy surrounding AI search falls into two main categories. One is the question of who bears responsibility when AI generates incorrect information, and the other is whether it is justifiable to use content from news outlets and publishers in AI responses while reducing traffic to the original source sites. While this German ruling focused on the issue of legal liability for AI-generated content, it is likely to fuel broader regulatory discussions regarding the entire AI search ecosystem as it intersects with the controversy over the use of publisher content.

In South Korea as well, attention is focused on the outcome of this ruling, as major search platforms such as Naver (#NAVER) and Daum are strengthening their AI search and summarization features. This is because the extent of liability may vary depending on whether AI responses are considered a simple search aid or an information service directly provided by the platform.