Germany Rules Google AI Overviews and Perplexity Are Publishers Under…

Germany's media regulator (ZAK) classified Google AI Overviews and Perplexity as content publishers rather than neutral platforms, stripping them of Digital Services Act liability protections and subjecting them to state media law. The ruling follows a Munich court decision holding Google liable for false statements in AI Overviews, marking the first global regulatory framework treating AI-generated search outputs as original editorial content. If you're building an AI search or summarisation product outside Germany, this ruling just became your template for what every other regulator will demand. Germany has classified AI outputs as original publishing, not neutral hosting—you now own every hallucination, every crowded-out link, every missing source disclosure.