Despite Big Tech and American tech elites criticizing how the European Union is introducing rules to regulate technology and AI on the continent, the European Union is not ignoring competition concerns. The European Commission has launched an investigation into whether Google may have breached EU competition law by using website content without paying its owners to generate AI summary answers that appear above search results.
The EC will also investigate how AI summaries use YouTube videos to generate answers. The investigation will examine whether Google is stifling competition in the AI market by giving itself access to website content and imposing “unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators.”
“The European Commission will investigate to what extent Google’s generation of AI Overview and AI Mode is based on the content of web publishers, without adequate compensation and without the possibility of denying publishers access without losing access to Google Search,” the bloc’s enforcement arm said in a statement.
Google’s AI Overview and AI Mode are the two main products investigated here, with the EC highlighting that the tech giant does not leave websites and content creators with many options as it directs the majority of web traffic, does not pay content royalties, and does not allow YouTube uploads if they do not allow Google to use their data.
The EU is also concerned about the fact that Google does not allow competing AI companies to use YouTube content to train their AI models.
“These complaints risk stifling innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever,” a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Europeans deserve to benefit from the latest technology and we will continue to work closely with the news and creative industries as they move into the AI era.”
The study comes at a time when companies developing AI models and content are being sued by publishers and websites for copyright infringement. For example, AI search tool Perplexity is being sued by multiple news organizations, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, News Corp, New York Post, Merriam-Webster, Nikkei, and Reddit.
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But the EU study is different. These media companies often file lawsuits as a way to negotiate content licensing deals with AI companies in hopes of compensating creators and receiving payment for their content. The EU is trying to level the playing field for AI companies competing with Google, and some reports say Google benefits from its reach by being able to train its AI models on much more of the internet than its competitors.
However, following consistent and widespread criticism of AI regulation, the EU is considering simplifying its AI rules and has proposed delaying the introduction of rules on the use of AI in high-risk applications.
