Publishers: Google's new AI search mode "meets the definition of theft"

The comparatively new "Overview with AI" function in Google Search, which the internet giant has already introduced on a large scale for US users and with a slight delay in Germany and other European countries at the end of March, has been causing a stir for some time. Now Google is also testing the "AI Mode" function on the other side of the Atlantic. It is intended to enable users to interact directly with the search engine as if it were a chatbot. The News/Media Alliance (NMA), a lobby organization with almost 2,000 members from the media sector in the USA and Canada, does not like this at all. It complains: "Now Google is simply taking content by force and using it without paying for it. That's the definition of theft."

Links in Google hit lists were "the last positive feature" of search engines "that brought traffic and revenue to publishers", explained Danielle Coffey, President of the News/Media Alliance, this week. The new AI Mode now offers users information and answers to their questions "without the multitude of links available to them in traditional Google search". This would deprive publishers of even more original content, traffic to their sites and revenue.

Google's AI mode "steals" its answers, complains the NMA. The search engine company generates these with publisher content without paying for it and without offering an efficient opt-out option. Publishers could only completely remove their content from the training of the AI models, but would then no longer appear in the search results. This is an unsuitable solution, especially for smaller media companies. The NMA also refers to the ongoing antitrust proceedings against Google. It is calling on the US Department of Justice to take measures to break the company's dominance on the internet.

AI mode with reasoning capabilities

Google explained AI Mode a few days ago at its developer conference. This intelligent addition to search will initially only be available in the USA. It is based on so-called reasoning capabilities. The aim is to be able to answer more complex questions directly in the search. Google uses content from the web and its own Knowledge Graph, i.e. the knowledge that the company has collected in a gigantic database.

Meanwhile, the EU Commission is investigating Google's AI overviews. It is examining how "Google AI Overviews" works in practice and how the automatically generated continuous texts for more complex search queries interact with EU copyright regulations. The stricter competition requirements under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) for "gatekeepers", the additional platform requirements under the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the older rules against unfair competition could also be relevant.

Leaked documents show that Google weighed up several options regarding the possibility for publishers to opt out of AI Overviews. The company ultimately decided against these approaches, Bloomberg reports. Google's options range from no changes to the control functions for publishers to an explicit separation between its own AI tools and the rest of search. The company described the latter as a "hard red line" and did not consider this approach any further.

Cultural Council pushes for revenue share

The documents also show that Google deliberately decided not to make these considerations public. One accusation is that the company wanted to conceal the fact that publishers would no longer be aware of whether and to what extent their protected works were being used as training data as a result of the changes. Many publishers are said to have already recorded a drastic drop in data traffic following the introduction of the less restrictive AI overviews.

Google, on the other hand, maintains that it continues to direct an enormous amount of traffic to publishers' websites. Liz Reid, head of Google Search, has defended the "all or nothing" strategy on publisher content by saying that allowing a selective opt-out for individual AI overviews while retaining traffic from traditional Google links would be "hugely complex". The search engine experts at 9to5Google point out that if Google were to bleed the publishers dry, they would be on the brink of extinction or switch to cheap and poorly produced content. The company must deal with this, as otherwise the Internet will deteriorate for everyone. The German Cultural Council believes it is essential that authors and rights holders such as publishers receive a share of the revenue generated by providers of generative artificial intelligence (AI).

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