The move by Germany's Commission for Licensing and Supervision (ZAK), which represents the country's 14 state media authorities, comes amid growing concerns across Europe about the accuracy, transparency and influence of AI-generated content. The decision follows a recent court ruling in Munich that found Google could be held directly responsible for allegedly inaccurate information generated by its AI Overviews feature.
According to ZAK, services such as Google's AI Overviews and Perplexity AI are no longer acting merely as intermediaries that point users to external sources. Instead, the regulator says they actively generate and present content in ways that can shape how people consume news and information.
"AI search engines and chatbots are content providers, and we will consistently apply German media law to them from now on," ZAK Chairman Thorsten Schmiege said in a statement.
The regulator maintained that the liability protections provided under the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA) do not apply in these cases because the AI-generated summaries and chatbot responses constitute original content produced by the providers themselves, rather than user-generated material hosted on their platforms.
The latest regulatory stance comes after a Munich court reportedly ruled that Google could be directly liable for allegedly false statements produced by its AI Overview feature. The court found that AI-generated summaries should be regarded as Google's own content instead of a neutral presentation of third-party information, according to Germany's newspaper publishers' association, BDZV.
ZAK also expressed concern about the growing prominence of AI-generated summaries within Google's search results. The authority argued that these summaries reduce the visibility of traditional search listings, potentially placing publishers and other third-party media outlets at a competitive disadvantage by limiting traffic to their websites.
Beyond Google, the regulator said chatbot services such as Perplexity AI also influence the discoverability of news by deciding which sources, links and recommendations accompany AI-generated answers. Because of that role, ZAK believes such platforms could qualify as media intermediaries, making them subject to German rules aimed at protecting media plurality and ensuring fair competition in the digital information ecosystem.
The decisions are not final, however. Both Google and Perplexity have the option of challenging the regulator's findings through legal channels.
Responding to the development, Perplexity declined to comment directly on the ruling but said it complies with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and maintains SOC 2 Type II security and privacy certification.
Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.