Today in “Words Mean Things”

Seems reasonable to methe-decoder.com/landmark-ger…— John Scalzi (@scalzi.com) 2026-06-10T07:38:19.000Z An interesting jurisprudential development someplace not in the US: A German court has ruled that Google is directly liable for what its AI search overviews say. Previous case law shielding search engine operators from liability doesn’t apply to AI overviews. The Regional Court of Munich hit Google with a temporary injunction barring the company from spreading false claims about two Munich-based publishers through its AI-generated search overviews (case no. 26 O 869/26). The court classified Google as a direct infringer because the “AI overview” is its own content, not just a list of search results. The crux of the issue is whether the “AI Overview” Google now provides — and which is often erroneous because LLMs can’t read or exercise judgement, they can only spit out statistically likely words — counts as a presentation of information provided elsewhere, as a normal search query…