35Legal and regulatory actions trackedAcross 6 trackers
26Actions in 2026So far
14Court filings, rulings and settlementsType: Legal
21Regulatory actions and AI Overviews suitsType: Regulation
This page collects every legal and regulatory entry from our trackers in one table. The newest entry is dated 1st Sep 2026, on the AI Overviews tracker.
Actions so far by tracker: AI Overviews (22), Perplexity (7), Gemini (2), Grok (2), Claude (1), Social Platforms (1).
We read the dockets and the regulators' own notices. A row appears when a filing, ruling, order or fine is public, never on a rumour of one.
Lawsuits, rulings and regulatory actions, newest first
Each row is a dated entry on one of our trackers. "Legal" rows are court filings, rulings and settlements.
"Regulation" rows are regulators' probes, orders, fines and complaints, plus the lawsuits filed against AI Overviews.
| Date | Event | Tracker | Type | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | ||||
| The EU asks publishers whether they will use Google's AI opt-out | AI Overviews | Regulation | Reuters saw a European Commission questionnaire asking publishers whether they will use Google's AI opt-out. Replies were due on 28th Aug and feed the Article 102 investigation. | |
| Google publishes the application rules for the EU search-data program, and never mentions AI chatbots | AI Overviews | Regulation | Google rewrote its European Search Dataset Licensing Program page to implement the Commission's July measures. Eligibility tests, three sample tiers, licences from 17th Sep, and no mention of AI chatbots. | |
| At the Chegg and Penske hearing, Judge Mehta says Google's AI answers are built "on the backs of the publishers" | AI Overviews | Legal | Google argued its motions to dismiss the two leading US publisher suits over AI Overviews, calling the feature a product improvement. Judge Amit Mehta pushed back, saying the arrangement "all seems really unfair", and has not yet ruled. | |
| A sealing order confirms Britannica's lawyers have inspected Perplexity's source code | Perplexity | Legal | A signed order in the Britannica and Merriam-Webster case shows plaintiffs inspected Perplexity's source code on site. What it produced is sealed, but the inspection is public record. | |
| The French press files against Google over AI Overviews and AI Mode | AI Overviews | Regulation | The Alliance de la presse d'information générale asked France's competition regulator to enforce the commitments Google gave in 2022. Publishers were offered a licence update or a withdrawal that costs them visibility, the Alliance says, and faced a fait accompli. | |
| Google points the judge at an App Store ruling, two weeks before the AI Overviews hearing | AI Overviews | Regulation | Google filed a notice of supplemental authority in both US AI Overviews suits on 5th Aug. The publishers' 10th Aug response names it: PhantomALERT v. Apple, dismissed for failing to plead a relevant market. | |
| Ninth Circuit vacates Amazon's injunction against Comet's shopping agent | Perplexity | Legal | The appeals court held Amazon unlikely to succeed under computer-crime law. The user, not Perplexity, accesses Amazon when Comet acts at that user's direction. | |
| Reddit's DMCA circumvention claims against Perplexity and SerpApi survive dismissal | Perplexity | Legal | Judge Engelmayer let Reddit's anti-circumvention claims proceed: Google's SearchGuard is an access-control measure, and Reddit has standing. It is the first ruling to send a SERP-scraping circumvention theory against an AI answer engine into discovery. | |
| The two US AI Overviews antitrust suits get a joint hearing date | AI Overviews | Regulation | Judge Amit Mehta set 25th Aug for a consolidated hearing on Google's motions to dismiss the Chegg and Penske Media suits. In May the same court had called a hearing "unnecessary". | |
| Google signs the EU's AI-content transparency code, days before the labelling rules bite | AI Overviews | Regulation | Google signed the EU's AI-content transparency code on 24th Jul, and the AI Act's labelling rules applied from 2nd Aug. Neither Google's post nor the code mentions Search, so what the regime asks of AI Overviews is unstated. | |
| The EU's first DMA fine on Google names AI Overviews and AI Mode | AI Overviews | Regulation | The European Commission fined Google 890 million euros for Search self-preferencing and Play Store steering, its first DMA penalty on the company. It covers classic results, and the Commission will consider Google's plan to apply its principles to AI Overviews and AI Mode. | |
| Anthropic's $1.5 billion authors settlement gets final approval | Claude | Legal | A federal judge approved the largest US copyright settlement: about $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 pirated books. Because Anthropic settled, the fair-use ruling sets no appellate precedent. | |
| The EU orders Google to share Search data with rivals, AI chatbots included | AI Overviews | Regulation | The European Commission ordered Google to share anonymised Search query, click, view and ranking data with rivals, including AI chatbots with search. Google must finalise the dataset by November 2026 and its pricing by January 2027. | |
| The EU orders Google to open Android to rival assistants, naming Gemini as the benchmark | Gemini | Legal | Two binding Digital Markets Act decisions order Google to open 11 Android interoperability features to rival AI assistants. They also make it share anonymised Search data with rivals, naming Gemini as the product competitors must match. | |
| German media regulators put AI Overviews under national media law | AI Overviews | Regulation | Germany's state media authorities ruled that AI answers are the provider's own content, outside the Digital Services Act liability shield. They also found AI Overviews unlawfully disadvantages journalistic media by pushing the links down, and Google says it will appeal. | |
| Publishers sue Google over the books behind Gemini | Gemini | Legal | Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier, Scott Turow and S.C.R.I.B.E. filed a proposed class action against Google. It alleges Google trained Gemini on millions of copyrighted works without authorisation and stripped copyright management information to conceal it. | |
| UK regulator orders an AI Overviews opt-out for publishers | AI Overviews | Regulation | The CMA ordered Google to let publishers opt out of AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover without losing search rankings. It is the first binding remedy anywhere, and publishers can also refuse the fine-tuning of AI models on their content. | |
| Munich court: AI Overviews are Google's own words, and Google answers for them | AI Overviews | Regulation | The Regional Court of Munich I barred Google from repeating false claims it had generated about two Munich publishers. The court held an AI Overview reads as Google's own statement, not forwarded third-party content, a first for any court. | |
| CNN sues Perplexity, the first US television network to sue an answer engine | Perplexity | Legal | CNN sued in the Southern District of New York after a 2025 payment deal between the companies ended. Its copyright and trademark claims say thousands of its stories, videos and images power competing outputs. | |
| A musician sues Google for C$1.5m after an AI Overview called him a sex offender | AI Overviews | Regulation | Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac is suing Google in Ontario after an AI Overview falsely called him a convicted sex offender. A First Nation cancelled one of his concerts over it. | |
| A US court dismisses a publisher antitrust case, and rules AI Overviews is not a separate product | AI Overviews | Regulation | Judge Amit Mehta threw out Helena World Chronicle and Emmerich Newspapers' antitrust case against Google in full. He held AI Overviews is a feature of Search, not a tied product, in the first US ruling on the question. | |
| Google tells the CMA it is exploring an AI Overviews opt-out, without saying when | AI Overviews | Regulation | Google told the CMA consultation it is exploring controls to let sites opt out of Search's generative AI features. It gave no details and no timeline, and the binding order arrived in June. | |
| European Publishers Council files antitrust complaint over AI Overviews | AI Overviews | Regulation | The EPC filed a formal EU antitrust complaint against Google over AI Overviews and AI Mode. It is the second publisher complaint after the Independent Publishers Alliance, alongside the Commission's open Article 102 investigation. | |
| SpaceX absorbs xAI, and the site starts calling itself SpaceXAI | Grok | Legal | SpaceX acquired xAI in an all-stock swap valuing the combined entity at about 1.25 trillion dollars. It is why x.ai now brands as SpaceXAI, and why Grok's user numbers ended up in an IPO prospectus. | |
| The European Commission opens a DSA investigation over Grok | Grok | Legal | The Commission opened formal Digital Services Act proceedings concerning Grok's image generation. It came two weeks after Ofcom opened its own Online Safety Act investigation and three countries blocked the product outright. | |
| TikTok's US joint venture closes: the algorithm gets American governance | Social Platforms | Legal | TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC closed with ByteDance at 19.9%. The algorithm is now hosted in Oracle's US data centers and retrained on US data, as the executive order requires, with monitoring by US security partners. | |
| 2025 | ||||
| European Commission opens Article 102 investigation into Google's AI search features | AI Overviews | Regulation | The European Commission opened a formal abuse-of-dominance investigation into Google's AI search features. It asks whether AI Overviews and AI Mode use publisher and YouTube content without fair pay or a real way to refuse. | |
| The New York Times sues Perplexity, a day after the Chicago Tribune | Perplexity | Legal | The biggest US masthead joined the SDNY pile-up with copyright claims aimed at retrieval-augmented generation. It cites paywalled content delivered "in real time", outputs "often verbatim or near-verbatim", and hallucinated content wrongly attributed to it, damaging the brand. | |
| Publishers take their AI Overviews evidence to the US Department of Justice | AI Overviews | Regulation | The UK coalition behind the first EU complaint over AI Overviews began lobbying the US Department of Justice. Its letter says the feature has caused "substantial and irreparable harm" to independent publishers, some with traffic down as much as 90%. | |
| Amazon sues Perplexity over Comet's shopping agent | Perplexity | Legal | A cease-and-desist demanded Comet's agent stop shopping on Amazon without identifying itself. Amazon filed computer-fraud claims the same day, and Perplexity's response post was titled "Bullying is not innovation". | |
| Reddit sues Perplexity and the scraping supply chain behind it | Perplexity | Legal | Reddit's SDNY suit names Perplexity, SerpApi, Oxylabs and AWMProxy, alleging data laundering: its content scraped out of Google's search results. A honeypot post visible only to Google's crawler surfaced in Perplexity answers within hours. | |
| UK CMA gives Google strategic market status, AI Overviews included | AI Overviews | Regulation | The UK Competition and Markets Authority gave Google strategic market status in search under the digital markets regime. The designation explicitly covers AI Overviews and AI Mode, and enables targeted interventions. | |
| Penske Media sues Google over AI Overviews | AI Overviews | Regulation | Rolling Stone and Variety publisher Penske Media filed the first major US publisher lawsuit over AI Overviews. It blames the feature, now on about 20% of searches returning its sites, for a one-third drop in affiliate revenue. | |
| Independent Publishers Alliance files the first EU complaint over AI Overviews | AI Overviews | Regulation | The Independent Publishers Alliance filed an EU antitrust complaint against Google over AI Overviews. It argues publishers cannot opt out of feeding Google's AI summaries without disappearing from Search. | |
| Chegg becomes the first company to sue Google over AI Overviews traffic loss | AI Overviews | Regulation | Education technology company Chegg filed a federal Sherman Act suit alleging AI Overviews repurpose its content to keep users on Google. It is the first lawsuit over AIO traffic loss, and Google said it would defend itself. | |
How we follow these cases
Dockets first, regulators' own pages second, trade press for context only.
For US cases we read the court docket through CourtListener's RECAP archive. We quote filings and orders directly.
For EU and UK actions we read the regulator's own notice, or the complainant's when the regulator posts nothing.
A trade write-up is not a source for a ruling. It can point us to one.
When a filing is sealed we say so, and we keep polling for the other side's reply.
Each entry links what it rests on. The entry, not this table, is the record.
What is included
Actions that touch how AI search and AI assistants gather, rank, answer and cite.
Included: antitrust cases about AI answers, and publisher and copyright suits against answer engines and model makers.
Also included: regulators' probes, orders and fines under the DMA, the DSA and national media law. Settlements that set terms for training or citation count too.
Also included: consumer and defamation cases where the product is the conduct at issue. A false claim in an AI Overview is the typical example.
Not included: cases about advertising fraud, employment, or corporate disputes that do not touch the product.
Google's search antitrust remedies appear here only where an entry ties them to AI answers. The AI Overviews tracker carries that thread in full.
Frequently asked questions
What is the latest lawsuit or ruling about AI search?
The most recent action on our trackers is dated 1st Sep 2026, on the AI Overviews tracker. The table above updates whenever a tracker records a new one.
How many legal and regulatory actions are there in 2026?
Our trackers record 26 actions in 2026 so far, out of 35 in total. Each is a dated, sourced entry.
Where can I read the filings?
Each entry links the docket or the regulator's notice. For US federal cases we link CourtListener, where filings marked available can be read free of charge.
Compiled by Claude from primary sources, checked by Akash Mansukhani before publication. See how we source and correct this page. Spotted a change we have not covered? Ranking volatility, a new SERP test, a platform change: email us a tip and we will credit you if we cover it.
Cite this page:
Keywords Everywhere, "AI search lawsuits and regulation", last updated 6th Sep 2026, https://keywordseverywhere.com/news/ai-search-lawsuits/