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Germany has become the first country to explicitly classify AI search features, such as Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity’s answers, as media products subject to national media law, according to Reuters.
The country’s Commission for Licensing and Supervision, which represents Germany’s 14 state media authorities, has argued that AI summaries and chatbot answers go beyond aggregating existing information as they create new outputs that reflect the providers’ own systems.
This follows a separate June 2026 court case in which a Munich court found Google could be held directly liable for inaccurate information produced by its AI Overview feature, according to the German newspaper publishers’ association BDZV.
Germany’s media regulator said AI search tools fall outside the European Union’s usual platform liability protections because they are not merely hosting third-party content but curating their own responses. The regulator also said Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity’s chatbot answers can shape what news audiences see, raising concerns about publishers’ visibility and reach.
As a result, the services provided by AI search features are therefore subject to German regulations aimed at protecting media plurality.
The decision could give regulators and publishers worldwide a new foothold in their push to hold AI companies accountable for how generated answers reshape the news ecosystem. It also weakens one of the key defenses used by technology platforms, which claim only to be intermediaries organizing information created by others.
The case may also become a blueprint for other European regulators, which have intensified investigations into major technology companies over competition, privacy and online safety concerns in recent years.
Google intends to appeal the decision, with a spokesperson characterizing the classification as a failure “to recognize how people’s preferences when searching for information and the information ecosystem are changing.”
