An AI system falsely described a court reporter as a convicted child abuser and escaped psychiatric patient. Two years later, a German court has drawn a sharper line around responsibility for false AI-generated answers. The cases are different, but together they expose the same unresolved problem: a person can be harmed immediately while responsibility remains fragmented.
The accusation came from the stories he had covered
Martin Bernklau spent years reporting on criminal proceedings around Tübingen, Germany. When he entered his own name and location into Microsoft Copilot in 2024, the system did not describe him as a journalist. It attributed to him serious crimes and events drawn from cases he had reported, including child abuse, fraud and an escape from a psychiatric institution.
The false answer reportedly included personal information and returned after attempts were made to suppress it. Bernklau had not merely encountered a poor summary. The system had assembled a new and damaging identity for a real person.
This matters because an AI answer often arrives in a confident, finished form. The person reading it may never see the source material, the uncertainty inside the model or the route by which unrelated facts were attached to the wrong name.
The damage starts before a court decides anything
A fabricated criminal record can affect reputation, employment, relationships and safety. The affected person may not know who received the answer or how often it appeared. They may have no practical way to prove that the same claim will not return in a slightly different form.
Traditional correction systems are poorly matched to that problem. A newspaper can correct an article at a known address. A database can amend a record. A generative system can produce a fresh answer each time, influenced by prompts, model versions, retrieval systems and safety layers that the affected person cannot inspect.
The burden then moves in the wrong direction. The person harmed must discover the output, preserve evidence, identify the provider, explain the error and keep checking whether it has returned.
A German court has moved the accountability line
In May 2026, the Regional Court of Munich I issued a preliminary injunction in a separate case involving Google AI Overviews. Two publishers had been falsely associated with scams and dubious practices. The court treated the generated overview as Google’s own content rather than a neutral list of third-party search results.
Google said it disagreed and would appeal. The ruling is first-instance and concerns German law, so it does not settle global liability for every chatbot or AI search product. It does, however, challenge a central defence: that the provider is merely presenting information found elsewhere and that users should verify it themselves.
An AI-generated answer is selected, composed and displayed by a product designed and operated by a company. If that product creates a new factual claim, responsibility cannot disappear simply because no employee typed the sentence.
The unresolved question is practical, not only legal
Legal liability matters, but most people need a remedy long before litigation ends. A workable correction system should answer four questions clearly: Who receives the complaint? Who investigates it? How quickly must the false claim be suppressed? What happens if it returns?
Providers should offer a visible route for people to challenge factual claims about themselves. They should preserve the disputed output, acknowledge the complaint, explain the action taken and test whether equivalent prompts reproduce the error. Where a serious allegation concerns an identifiable person, correction should extend beyond one exact wording.
Independent oversight also matters. A provider should not be the only party able to inspect the evidence, decide whether its system failed and declare the remedy complete.
What you can do if an AI system makes a false claim about you
Do not argue repeatedly with the chatbot. Preserve evidence first. Record the full prompt, answer, date, product name, model or mode if shown, source links and screenshots. If possible, save the page or screen recording.
Use the provider’s reporting process and state precisely which claims are false. Ask for written confirmation of the complaint and the action taken. Check whether the same claim appears through a small number of equivalent prompts, but do not amplify it publicly unless necessary.
If the allegation could affect work, safety or reputation, obtain advice appropriate to your jurisdiction. Consider notifying relevant employers, professional bodies or platforms only where there is a realistic risk they may encounter the false information.
The aim is evidence, correction and containment. The person targeted should not be expected to become the permanent auditor of a system they did not build.
The question Immortal AI will keep following
Bernklau’s experience shows how easily a system can turn a person’s professional history into a false personal identity. The Munich ruling suggests courts may be less willing to treat generated answers as somebody else’s speech. The appeal will matter, as will the remedies providers create outside court.
The central question remains: when AI invents a damaging identity, who has the power and responsibility to correct it completely?
Principal sources
- SWR/The Decoder: Microsoft Copilot falsely accuses court reporter (20 August 2024)
- ABC Australia: AI hallucinations and defamation, including Martin Bernklau (3 November 2024)
- Library of Congress: Germany court holds Google liable for incorrect AI Overviews (17 July 2026)
- Reuters: Google to appeal German AI Overview ruling (12 June 2026)
- Oxford Business Law Blog: analysis of the Munich ruling (16 July 2026)
This article was researched and drafted with AI assistance under Immortal AI’s editorial process. Sources and final wording were reviewed by the editor before publication.
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