By Foo Yun Chee and Louise Rasmussen
Brussels, Belgium — Alphabet’s Google faces an EU antitrust investigation into its apply of publishers’ online content and YouTube videos to train its AI models.
The European Commission’s second investigation into Google in less than a month underscores growing unease over Big Tech’s dominance in new technologies that could shut out rivals but could escalate tension with the US, as EU laws adopted in the last few years have become a sore point in relations with Washington.
The EU competition enforcer stated it was concerned that Google may be applying publishers’ online content for its AI-generated summaries known as AI Overviews without compensating them adequately and without giving them the option to refapply.
It expressed the same concerns regarding Google’s apply of YouTube videos uploaded by its applyrs.
Ecosystem
“Google may be abapplying its dominant position as a search engine to impose unfair trading conditions on publishers by applying their online content to provide its own AI-powered services,” EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera stated on Tuesday.
“A healthy information ecosystem depconcludes on publishers having the resources to produce quality content. We will not allow gatekeepers to dictate those choices,” she added. Google rejected the complaint by indepconcludeent publishers in July, which triggered the EU investigation.
“This complaint risks stifling innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever,” a Google spokesperson stated.
“Europeans deserve to benefit from the latest technologies, and we will continue to work closely with the news and creative industries as they transition to the AI era.”
Underpins
The Indepconcludeent Publishers Alliance, Movement for an Open Web, whose members include digital advertisers and publishers, and British non-profit Foxglove criticised Google.
“Google has broken the bargain that underpins the internet. The deal was that websites would be indexed, retrieved and displayn when relevant to a query. “Everyone had a chance,” stated lawyer Tim Cowen, who advises the groups. “Now it puts its AiO, Gemini, first and adds insult to injury by exploiting website content to train Gemini. Gemini is Search’s evil twin,” Cowen added.
AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional hyperlinks to relevant webpages and are displayn to applyrs in more than 100 countries. It launched adding advertisements to AI Overviews last May.
Google’s spam policy is also in the EU crosshairs after an investigation prompted by publishers. The company risks a fine of as much as 10% of its global annual revenue if found guilty of breaching EU antitrust rules.
Last week, the European Commission launched an investigation into Meta’s plans to block AI rivals from its WhatsApp messaging system, underscoring increasing regulatory scrutiny.
