Google has been hit with an antitrust lawsuit in the European Union over its AI Summaries feature, introduced to Google Search last year, Reuters reports.
A nonprofit organization called the Independent Publishers Alliance, which represents a group of unnamed publishers, alleged that “Google’s core search engine service is misusing web content for Google’s AI Overviews in Google Search.”
The complaint to the EU Commission alleged that since the service was introduced last year it has caused “significant harm to publishers, including news publishers in the form of traffic, readership and revenue loss.”
Rosa Curling, a director at Foxglove, a UK-based legal nonprofit that co-signed the complaint, dubbed the tool an “existential threat” to independent news. She urged the European Commission and other regulators worldwide to enable publishers to opt out of AI Summaries. The complaint was shared with major regulators outside the scope of the European Commission, with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority confirming receipt of the document, according to Reuters.
Google has clapped back at some of the allegations against it, saying these claims were based on incomplete data.
“The reality is that sites can gain and lose traffic for a variety of reasons, including seasonal demand, interests of users, and regular algorithmic updates to Search,” a Google spokesperson told Reuters.
Publishers taking serious legal action against AI giants is nothing new; it’s been over two years since the New York Times launched its lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI, alleging it was unfairly using its content to train its AI models. Since then, numerous household names in journalism and publishing have launched their own lawsuits against tech firms launching AI tools, including The Wall Street Journal and New York Post.
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Google AI Summaries have attracted criticism for more than potentially depriving publishers of income. The feature has caught plenty of flak for producing inaccurate search results, including saying that dogs play in the NBA and that 19th-century US President Andrew Jackson graduated from college in 2005.
EU regulators have shown a willingness to take a firm hand with Google before, hitting the company with more than 8 billion euros (roughly $8.6 billion) in fines so far, including a record 4.34 billion euro (about $4.7 billion) penalty in 2018.
If you’re interested in a more classic browsing experience, check out PCMag’s guide to turning off the AI Summaries feature.
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