The Pulse
Aachen Court Extends Google AI Search Liability Ruling
Aachen Regional Court barred Google from repeating false claims generated by its AI Mode search feature about a doctor. The September injunction adopts reasoning from a Munich case, where a separate ruling against Google later became moot a
AI.info Team · Written with AI ·
On September 24, the Regional Court of Aachen ordered Google to stop circulating three false accounts about a doctor through its AI Mode search feature. The claims wrongly connected him to criminal allegations and proceedings involving another former university professor. The ruling applies reasoning first used in a separate Munich case: an AI-generated search answer can count as Google’s own statement, not just a display of information from other websites.
A search result attached another professor’s case to a doctor
The Aachen doctor had been a chief physician and professor of neuroradiology until June 2026. A colleague alerted him on August 28 that Google’s AI Mode attributed his departure from the hospital to an alleged sexual assault against his secretary. Follow-up searches about his suspension, dismissal and court proceedings produced longer answers, including a fabricated account of legal events.
The criminal case described in those answers concerned a different former professor, the court found. The doctor asked Google to remove the material in late August and sent a formal legal demand, but the court said the false text was still available. It issued the injunction without first hearing Google, citing the risk of serious harm to the doctor’s professional reputation.
The order bars Google from circulating the three disputed versions. A violation could bring a fine of up to €250,000 per breach. Google can challenge the injunction, which is not final.
Aachen treats AI Mode as more than a list of links
The court did not regard the answers as simple signposts to third-party material. It said Google’s system produced substantive claims by evaluating and combining information, and that the company could check those claims against the websites it used. The ruling also says that the doctor’s objections, if put to the AI system, would have exposed the error.
“The respondent provides AI-generated search and is therefore also responsible for the answers generated in this context.”
Landgericht Aachen, quoted by The Decoder
That principle echoes the Munich Regional Court I’s May 28 decision. There, Google’s AI Overviews had linked two Munich publishers to scams, subscription traps and other dubious practices, including claims that did not appear in the linked sources. The Munich court classified the summaries as content attributable to Google and barred the company from repeating specified claims.
The Munich ruling no longer stands as a live judgment
Google appealed the Munich decision, but the parties later settled the case. The official court record says the settlement ended the proceedings and rendered the May judgment moot; no appeals court issued a ruling on its reasoning. The Aachen order therefore supplies a second court’s application of a similar approach, not a binding higher-court precedent.
The procedural difference matters. Aachen’s injunction is preliminary and was issued without Google first being heard, while the Munich judgment also arose from interim-injunction proceedings. The Aachen decision does not resolve how German courts will treat every AI-generated search answer, or what Google must do across its services to prevent similar errors.
The boundary between search and authorship remains contested
For conventional search results, German courts have generally treated the operator as pointing users to third-party material, with liability often turning on notice of unlawful content. The new decisions draw a distinction for generative answers that assemble claims into a standalone narrative. In Aachen, that distinction applied to AI Mode, extending the argument beyond the AI Overviews at issue in Munich.
Both rulings concern particular false statements and specific injunctions, not a general finding that Google is liable for every AI error. Whether the Aachen order survives a challenge, and whether another court adopts the same reasoning, will determine how far the two decisions reach. For now, Google faces an order over three AI Mode answers about one doctor, with a potential €250,000 fine for each violation.