Google faces EU antitrust investigation over AI Overviews, YouTube

BRUSSELS: Alphabet’s Google faces an EU antitrust investigation into its use of publishers’ online content and YouTube videos to train its artificial intelligence 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 tensions with the United States as EU laws adopted in the last few years have become a sore point in relations with Washington.

The EU competition enforcer said it was concerned that Google may be using publishers’ online content for its AI-generated summaries known as AI Overviews without compensating them adequately and without giving them the option to refuse.

It expressed the same concerns regarding Google’s use of YouTube videos uploaded by its users.

“Google may be abusing its dominant position as a search engine to impose unfair trading conditions on publishers by using their online content to provide its own AI-powered services,” EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said on Tuesday.

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“A healthy information ecosystem depends 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 independent 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 said.

“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.”

The Independent 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 shown when relevant to a query. Everyone had a chance,” said 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 shown to users in more than 100 countries. It began 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.