Company in court: Google’s AI sealed doctor sex crimes

It will be close for Google. Now a second German district court has formulated: Google is responsible for the artificial intelligence (AI) it uses. So decided the District Court of Aachen (Az. 8 O 268/26). Google had refused to correct false statements. The case was obvious and serious. Google’s AI confused two doctors and made an innocent doctor a convicted sex offender. The person concerned contacted Google and requested a change. Google rejected that. Shortly thereafter, the district court issued an injunction against “Google Ireland Limited”; because of the urgency of the case even without a previous hearing. Google must also bear the costs of the proceedings. It happened: nothing happened: On August 28, the doctor asked Google via email to “[email protected]” to delete false claims. On September 15, Google said it had decided not to take any action. On the same day, Google was warned by the affected doctor. Again, nothing happened. The doctor went to the court. Already nine days later, the judges granted the doctor an injunction: The statements violated him in his general right of personality. The AI-generated contributions are factual claims for which Google is responsible. The regional court cited a similar ruling of the regional court Munich I of 28 May (Az. 26 O 869/26), according to which Google must be attributed the AI overviews. These are not mere links to foreign websites, but new statements generated by the search engine itself. In Aachen, the judges put it so that Google provides the AI-generated search and is thus “responsible for the answers generated in this respect”. Google can check the statements of its AI in advance, at least by comparing the underlying websites of third parties with their own statements based on them. Google has the right to appeal the decision. This is not time-bound. So far, no objection has been received, declared the Aachen District Court of the F.A.Z. The Munich case had not become legally binding, the parties had ended the legal dispute by settlement after appeal (No. 18 U 1744/26). The judgment on file number 26 O 869/26 thus became devoid of purpose. Presumably, Google will also try to conclude a settlement in the Aachen case in order to prevent a precedent decision. The journalist Matthias Bastian, editor of the platform “The Decoder”, assesses the developments as follows: If courts repeatedly classify the company as a spreader of false statements and Google threatens principle judgments of higher instances by probably financial comparisons, a dangerous incentive arises. For specialized law firms and affected actors, it could become a lucrative business model to penalize the AI search with specific questions until the language model spins together false and potentially detrimental statements. Subsequently, an injunction can be filed in order to negotiate a settlement