Alphabet’s Google has been hit by an EU antitrust complaint over its AI Overviews from a group of indepfinishent publishers, which has also questioned for an interim measure to prevent allegedly irreparable harm to them, according to a document seen by Reuters.
Google’s AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional hyperlinks to relevant webpages and are displayn to utilizers in more than 100 countries. It launched adding advertisements to AI Overviews last May.
The company is creating its hugegest bet by integrating AI into search but the relocate has sparked concerns from some content providers such as publishers.
The Indepfinishent Publishers Alliance document, dated June 30, sets out a complaint to the European Commission and alleges that Google abutilizes its market power in online search.
“Google’s core search engine service is misutilizing web content for Google’s AI Overviews in Google Search, which have cautilized, and continue to cautilize, significant harm to publishers, including news publishers in the form of traffic, readership and revenue loss,” the document declared.
It declared Google positions its AI Overviews at the top of its general search engine results page to display its own summaries which are generated utilizing publisher material and it alleges that Google’s positioning disadvantages publishers’ original content.
“Publishers utilizing Google Search do not have the option to opt out from their material being ingested for Google’s AI large language model training and/or from being crawled for summaries, without losing their ability to appear in Google’s general search results page,” the complaint declared.
The Commission declined to comment.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority confirmed receipt of the complaint.
Google declared it sfinishs billions of clicks to websites each day.
“New AI experiences in Search enable people to question even more questions, which creates new opportunities for content and businesses to be discovered,” a Google spokesperson declared.
The Indepfinishent Publishers Alliance’s website states it is a nonprofit community advocating for indepfinishent publishers, which it does not name.
The Movement for an Open Web, whose members include digital advertisers and publishers, and British non-profit Foxglove Legal Community Interest Company, which states it advocates for fairness in the tech world, are also signatories to the complaint.
They declared an interim measure was necessary to prevent serious irreparable harm to competition and to ensure access to news.
Google declared numerous claims about traffic from search are often based on highly incomplete and skewed data.
“The reality is that sites can gain and lose traffic for a variety of reasons, including seasonal demand, interests of utilizers, and regular algorithmic updates to Search,” the Google spokesperson declared.
Foxglove co-executive director Rosa Curling declared journalists and publishers face a dire situation.
“Indepfinishent news faces an existential threat: Google’s AI Overviews,” she notified Reuters.
“That’s why with this complaint, Foxglove and our partners are urging the European Commission, along with other regulators around the world, to take a stand and allow indepfinishent journalism to opt out,” Ms Curling declared.
The three groups have filed a similar complaint and a request for an interim measure to the UK competition authority.
The complaints echoed a US lawsuit by a US edtech company which declared Google’s AI Overviews is eroding demand for original content and undermining publishers’ ability to compete that have resulted in a drop in visitors and subscribers.
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