Google faces EU antitrust complaint over AI Overviews as independent publishers seek action – Reuters
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Veronique D
Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google has reportedly been hit by an EU antitrust complaint over its AI Overviews from a group of independent publishers, which has also asked for an interim measure to prevent allegedly irreparable harm to them.
Google’s 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.
The tech giant is making its most ambitious move yet by integrating AI into its search platform, but the shift has raised alarms among content providers, particularly publishers.
In a document dated June 30, seen by Reuters, the Independent Publishers Alliance filed a formal complaint with the European Commission, accusing Google of exploiting its dominance in online search, harming independent media.
“Google’s core search engine service is misusing web content for Google’s AI Overviews in Google Search, which have caused, and continue to cause, significant harm to publishers, including news publishers in the form of traffic, readership and revenue loss,” the document said.
The complaints echoed a U.S. lawsuit by a U.S. edtech company, which said Google’s AI Overviews is eroding demand for original content and undermining publishers’ ability to compete that has resulting in a drop in visitors and subscribers.
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