{“lastseen”:”2026-06-11T18:05:07″,”description”:”A German court has ruled that Google can be held directly responsible for defamatory claims produced by its AI Overviews. Basically, the court said that telling people they should double-check AI search results is not enough to deny liability for what those results say. \\n\\nThis kind of warning may not be enough\\n\\nThe Munich Regional Court issued a preliminary injunction against Google after two German publishers discovered that AI Overviews falsely portrayed them as involved in scams and \u201cdubious business practices,\u201d even though the linked articles did not support those claims.\\n\\nThe decision could echo far beyond Germany. The court effectively found that Google can be held directly liable for defamatory content generated by its AI Overviews. The court cut through the usual \u201cit\u2019s just AI, don\u2019t trust it too much\u201d messaging and made one thing clear: If you build a system that confidently smears people or companies, you may be responsible for what it says, even when the content was \u201challucinated\u201d by AI.\\n\\nAI Overviews are not harmless suggestions. In this case, the court treated them as Google\u2019s own statements, with all the legal baggage that comes with that.\\n\\nWhen the publishers sent a cease-and-desist letter, Google did not promptly stop similar claims from appearing. That detail turned out to be crucial in the ruling. The court noted that, unlike traditional search results, which simply list third-party content, AI Overviews generate \u201cindependent, new, and substantive statements.\u201d\\n\\nAnd since only Google can adjust the models and the logic that create those statements, only Google can reliably stop the system from repeating the same or similar falsehoods. In this case, the court found that Google can be held responsible.\\n\\nFor years, search engines have enjoyed broad protection under the logic that some harmful content is unavoidable when indexing the open web at scale. Showing a search result does not mean endorsing it. The search engine is a channel, not a publisher. \\n\\nThat changes when an AI Overview summarizes, rephrases, and sometimes invents facts, then publishes them at the top of search results.\\n\\nAI Overviews are an extra feature, not essential to how search works. However, the appeal of AI summaries is their fast, confident answers, which is exactly what makes them dangerous. When those answers are wrong, many users may not click through to check the sources.\\n\\nThe ruling is preliminary and may be appealed, but the signal is clear: AI search output is not magic dust that makes liability disappear. Disclaimers about possible mistakes may not be enough when a system is deployed at scale, creates new content, and is designed to be trusted.\\n\\n## By the numbers\\n\\nGoogle AI Overviews are powered by Gemini, Google’s AI model. Like other AI systems, it can produce confident answers that are wrong or poorly supported. \\n\\nPew Research studied browsing data from hundreds of users and found that when an AI Overview appears on a Google results page, clicks to traditional search results drop from around 15% to about 8%. \\n\\nA New York Times analysis of AI Overviews found that they were accurate roughly nine out of ten times. But with Google processing more than five trillion searches a year, even a small error rate could mean millions of wrong answers.\\n\\nAnd those mistakes are not always due to bad sources. Even when Google links to a page with the correct information, its AI can still produce a false answer. More than half of the accurate responses were classified as \\”ungrounded,\\” meaning the websites cited by the AI Overview did not fully support the information it provided.\\n\\nThe main lesson here is to double-check AI search responses. Don’t trust an answer just because it’s presented confidently and includes links. \\n\\nUsers can be steered toward real threats, or away from effective protections, simply because an AI system sounded convincing on a search page.\\n\\nIf you find false or defamatory AI summaries about yourself or your company, document them thoroughly. Take screenshots, save the search terms, file correction requests, and keep records of the platform\u2019s response. Or the lack of one.\\n\\n* * *\\n\\n**Scammers don’t need to hack you. They just need you to click once.** \\n\\nMalwarebytes Identity Theft Protection catches suspicious activity before it becomes a problem.”,”published”:”2026-06-11T16:09:13″,”modified”:”2026-06-11T16:09:13″,”type”:”malwarebytes”,”title”:”Google can be liable for false AI Overviews, court rules”,”source”:””,”references”:””,”id”:”MALWAREBYTES:D5028D634DF12F241ACB0EB1A1FC9334″,”bulletinFamily”:”blog”,”cwe”:null,”cvelist”:[],”sourceData”:””,”sourceHref”:””,”cvss”:{“score”:0,”severity”:”NONE”,”vector”:”NONE”,”version”:”NONE”},”cvss2″:{},”cvss3″:{“version”:””,”vectorString”:””,”baseScore”:0,”baseSeverity”:””,”attackVector”:””,”attackComplexity”:””,”privilegesRequired”:””,”userInteraction”:””,”scope”:””,”confidentialityImpact”:””,”integrityImpact”:””,”availabilityImpact”:””,”cvssV3″:{“version”:””,”vectorString”:””,”baseScore”:0,”baseSeverity”:””,”attackVector”:””,”attackComplexity”:””,”privilegesRequired”:””,”userInteraction”:””,”scope”:””,”confidentialityImpact”:””,”integrityImpact”:””,”availabilityImpact”:””}},”href”:”https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/ai\/2026\/06\/google-can-be-liable-for-false-ai-overviews-court-rules”,”category_name”:”News”,”post_link”:””,”product”:””,”version”:””,”vendor”:””,”ai_description”:””,”ai_severity”:””,”ai_vendor”:””,”ai_product”:””,”ai_version”:””,”ai_score”:0}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{“lastseen”:”2026-06-11T18:05:07″,”description”:”A German court has ruled that Google can be held directly responsible for defamatory claims produced by its AI Overviews. Basically, the court said that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6,8,12,115,13,33,7,11,5],"class_list":["post-62008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-category_news","tag-cve","tag-cvss","tag-exploit","tag-malwarebytes","tag-news","tag-none","tag-security","tag-tapic","tag-vulnerability"],"yoast_head":"\n