Rolling Stone’s owner, Penske, is suing Google over AI overviews

The
lawsuit by Penske Media in federal court in Washington, D.C., marks the
first time a major U.S. publisher has taken Alphabet-owned Google to
court over the AI-generated summaries that now appear on top of its search results.

News
organizations have for months said the new features, including Google’s
“AI Overviews,” siphon traffic away from their sites, eroding
advertising and subscription revenue.

Penske, a family-owned media
conglomerate led by Jay Penske and whose content attracts 120 million
online visitors a month, said Google only includes publishers’ websites
in its search results if it can also use their articles in AI summaries.

Without
the leverage, Google would have to pay publishers for the right to
republish their work or use it to train its AI systems, the company said
in the lawsuit. It added Google was able to impose such terms due to
its search dominance, pointing to a federal court’s finding last year
that the tech giant held a near 90% share of the U.S. search market.

“We
have a responsibility to proactively fight for the future of digital
media and preserve its integrity – all of which is threatened by
Google’s current actions,” Penske said.

It alleged that about 20%
of Google searches that link to its sites now show AI Overviews, a share
it expects to rise, and added that its affiliate revenue has fallen by
more than a third from its peak by the end of 2024 as search traffic
declined.

Online
education company Chegg also sued Google in February, alleging that the
search giant’s AI-generated overviews were eroding demand for original
content and undermining publishers’ ability to compete.

Responding
to Penske’s lawsuit, Google said on Saturday that AI overviews offer a
better experience to users and send traffic to a wider variety of
websites.

“With AI Overviews, people find Search more helpful and
use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered. We
will defend against these meritless claims.” Google Spokesperson Jose
Castaneda said.

A
judge handed the company a rare antitrust win earlier this month by
ruling that it will not have to sell its Chrome browser as part of
efforts to open up competition in search.

The move disappointed
some publishers and industry bodies, including the News/Media Alliance
which has said the decision left publishers without the ability to opt
out of AI overviews.

“All of the elements being negotiated with
every other AI company doesn’t apply to Google because they have the
market power to not engage in those healthy practices,” Danielle Coffey,
CEO of the News/Media Alliance, a trade group representing more than
2,200 U.S.-based publishers, told Reuters on Friday.

“When
you have the massive scale and market power that Google has, you are
not obligated to abide by the same norms. That is the problem.”

Coffey
was referring to AI licensing deals firms such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI
have been signing with the likes of News Corp, Financial Times and The
Atlantic. Google, whose Gemini chatbot competes with ChatGPT, has been
slower to sign such deals.

Additional reporting by Rhea Rose Abraham and Nilutpal Timsina

—Aditya Soni, Reuters

Fast Company