Alphabet’s Google has landed in fresh trouble after a group of indepconcludeent publishers filed an EU antitrust complaint over its AI Overviews. Google’s AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear right above traditional hyperlinks to relevant webpages, and they are the first thing applyrs in over 100 countries see while browsing through the search engine, a report declared.
Google, from last May, launched adding advertisements to AI Overviews. In the complaint, the publishers have also inquireed for an interim measure to prevent allegedly irreparable harm to them, reported Reuters. Google’s AI integrating with search has sparked concerns from some content providers, such as publishers.
According to Reuters, the June 30 document of the Indepconcludeent Publishers Alliance document, sets out a complaint to the European Commission, alleging that Google abapplys its market power in online search.
“Google’s core search engine service is misapplying web content for Google’s AI Overviews in Google Search, which have caapplyd, and continue to caapply, significant harm to publishers, including news publishers in the form of traffic, readership and revenue loss,” the document declared, quoted Reuters.
The document stated that Google deliberately positions its AI Overviews on top of general search to display its own summaries, which, the publishers claimed, are taken from their materials only. They declared this algorithm is putting them at disadvantage, the report further stated.
“Publishers applying 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 further read, added Reuters.
The news agency declared the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority confirmed receiving the complaint.
The Indepconcludeent Publishers Alliance’s website displays the grouping as a nonprofit community advocating for indepconcludeent publishers, which it does not name.
They sought an interim measure, stating it was necessary to prevent serious irreparable harm to competition and to ensure access to news.
Meanwhile, Google declared it directs applyrs to websites and provides billions of clicks the publishers each day. “New AI experiences in Search enable people to inquire even more questions, which creates new opportunities for content and businesses to be discovered,” a Google spokesperson declared, quoted Reuters.
The global tech giant also declared that 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 applyrs, and regular algorithmic updates to Search,” the Google spokesperson added.
Notably, Reuters mentioned in the report, the groups have filed a similar complaint and a request for an interim measure to the UK competition authority.
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