Chatbot answer shown to visitors on an aesthetic medicine clinic's website, advertising its two reality-TV doctors: both are 'Fachärzte für ästhetische Medizin' - certified specialists in aesthetic medicine. No such specialist title exists under German medical-chamber rules. When Verbraucherzentrale NRW challenged the claim, the clinic's defence was that the AI had made the title up.
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Expert: Higher Regional Court of Hamm (OLG Hamm), Ruling of 12 May 2026, Az. 4 UKl 3/25, claimant Verbraucherzentrale NRW Under German law the operator of a website chatbot answers for what the chatbot says, including statements the bot invented. In a ruling of 12 May 2026 (Az. 4 UKl 3/25) the Higher Regional Court of Hamm rejected the defence that 'the AI made it up', in a case brought by Verbraucherzentrale NRW under the Unfair Competition Act (UWG) against an aesthetic medicine clinic whose chatbot advertised its two reality-TV doctors with a specialist title that does not exist under medical-chamber rules. The court treated the chatbot as an extension of the business, not an external party: anything the bot tells a customer counts as the operator's own commercial statement, whether or not a human ever typed those words. Three reflexes operators normally reach for do not survive that reasoning. 1. Restricting the chatbot to validated proprietary content narrows the topic surface, but it does not stop the generative layer from inventing wording - bounded inputs do not produce bounded outputs. 2. An 'I am an AI, please confirm with our team' disclaimer manages user expectations; it shifts no legal liability to the user. 3. Forcing in-model source citations adds scaffolding, not proof: a system that hallucinates a professional title will also hallucinate the source that supposedly confirms it. The court allowed revision to the Bundesgerichtshof, so if the ruling is confirmed it would apply nationwide rather than only to clinics. Article 50 of the EU AI Act, centred on labelling, takes effect in August 2026 and lands in the same window. Source: https://www.og1o.com/en/resources/blog/the-new-bar-for-ai-chatbot-operators-after-olg-hamm
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