Google hit by European publishers' complaint to EU over AI Overviews

Alphabet unit Google was hit with an EU antitrust complaint by the European Publishers Council on Tuesday (10 February) over its AI-generated summaries known as AI Overviews, a move that could add weight to an ongoing EU investigation into the issue.

Rivals have voiced concerns that Big Tech's dominance in new technologies could shut them out while publishers have been critical of tech giants using their content without paying them.

"It is about stopping a dominant gatekeeper from using its market power to take publishers' content without consent, without fair compensation, and without giving publishers any realistic way to protect their journalism," EPC chairman Christian Van Thillo said in a statement.

"AI Overviews and AI Mode fundamentally undermine the economic compact that has sustained the open web," he said.

Google pushed back against the publishers.

"These inaccurate claims are an attempt to hold back helpful new AI features that Europeans want. We design our AI features to surface great content across the web and we provide easy-to-use controls for them to manage their content," a Google spokesperson said.

The company is now looking into its technical controls to let sites opt out of Search generative AI features. Publishers, however, said these did not offer any meaningful protection as opting out of AI use would reduce their search visibility.

The EPC said that Google relies on its control of online search to secure access to content without payment, echoing similar European Union antitrust concerns.

The Commission, in a statement kicking off its investigation in December, said Google may be abusing its market power as a search engine to impose unfair trading conditions on publishers.