Publishers accuse Google of AI Overview double theft

A consortium of publishers and advertisers has lodged complaints in both the UK and EU over Google’s AI Overview, amid claims that the tool not only steals publishers’ content but also their traffic, by discouraging readers from clicking through to individual sites.

Launched over a year ago, the AI Overview now appears at the top of many search results, with a summary of the information, meaning people get what they need without visiting the actual site where it is held.

And, according to one recent independent study, there is a 34.5% reduction in organic click-through rates when the AI Overview appears in search results.

Now, the Independent Publishers Alliance has joined forces with the Movement for an Open Web, a group of digital advertisers and publishers, as well as Foxglove Legal Community Interest Company, a UK non-profit focused on fairness in the tech sphere, to file complaints with the UK’s Competition & Markets Authority and the European Commission.

The consortium is calling on both regulators to implement interim measures to tackle the issue.

The filing states: “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 complaint goes on to argue that publishers are given no choice but to hand over their content to Google, adding: “Publishers using Google Search do not have the option to opt out from their material being ingested for Google’s AI large language model training and/or from being crawled for summaries, without losing their ability to appear in Google’s general search results page.”

Commenting on the complaint, the co-founder of the Movement for an Open Web Tim Cowen said: “In short, AI Overviews are theft from the publishing industry. They steal publishers’ content and then use that to steal their traffic before it reaches their site. That’s unfair and a clear breach of copyright principles.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google has jumped to the defence of the tool, maintaining that AI Overview clicks deliver superior user engagement.

Google search advocate John Mueller said: “We’ve seen that when people click to a website from search results pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are of higher quality, where users are more likely to spend more time on the site.”

Separately, UK publishers are pursuing a £13.6bn legal claim against Google over alleged anti-competitive practices in online display advertising. The British claim, which is being supported by similar action in the Netherlands, is seeking compensation for lost revenue from the sale of advertising space on the websites of news publishers and any site funded by online ads, nearly 200,000 businesses.

The claim is being brought by Ad Tech Collective Action (ATCA), led by Claudio Pollack, Charles Arthur and Kate Wellington, who allege that Google abused its dominant position in the adtech market and caused significant loss to UK online publishers.

ACTA argues that Google’s alleged anti-competitive behaviour has harmed publishers by “dictating terms, controlling pricing” and “favouring its own platforms” in the process of selecting ads displayed online. These practices, the lawsuit claims, have reduced publisher advertising revenue by up to 40%.