Google has been subject to an antitrust complaint with the European Commission over AI Overviews
An antitrust complaint has been filed with the European Commission against Google over its AI Overviews feature — AI-generated overviews that appear above regular search results. About this informsReuters agency.
The complaint was filed by a group of independent publishers, which is also demanding immediate action to prevent what it believes is serious and irreversible damage to the industry. This follows from a document that ended up in the agency’s possession. The AI Overviews feature generates short summaries of responses to user queries and is already available in over 100 countries. Since May, Google has also started placing ads in these blocks.
According to a June 30 statement from the Alliance of Independent Publishers, Google is abusing its dominant position in the online search market. Publishers point out that Google uses their content to create AI Overviews, resulting in reduced traffic, audience reach and revenue.
The complaint states that Google places Overviews at the top of the page, displacing original content from publishers. At the same time, they cannot prohibit the use of their texts in the training of language models or in the formation of such reviews without the risk of completely disappearing from the search results.
Google responded that they send billions of traffic to third-party sites every day:
“New AI-powered features in search allow people to ask even more questions — creating new opportunities for content and business.”
The group of complainants is calling on regulators to apply temporary measures to protect competition and preserve access to news content. Google, for its part, claims that many of the allegations of traffic loss are based on “incomplete and distorted information.”
