On Tuesday 9 December, the European Commission announced that it had opened an antitrust investigation against Google, which it suspects of unfairly using content from web publishers and content uploaded to YouTube to feed its own artificial intelligence services.
According to the institution, Google’s privileged access to the data and content disseminated on its platforms could distort competition in the field of artificial intelligence and put its direct competitors at a disadvantage. The Commission is targeting two specific services offered by Google: ‘AI Overviews’ and ‘AI Mode’, which display AI-generated summaries in response to Google searches.
This feature is based on content published by third parties, without offering them appropriate remuneration from publishers or the option of refusing such use without losing access to Google Search.
The same principle applies to YouTube, where every user who uploads a video is required to authorise Google to use its data and content for various purposes, including training its generative AI models.
Once again, without appropriate remuneration and without offering the possibility of refusing this exploitation without losing access to the platform. This situation is all the more problematic in that Google “does not allow competing developers of AI models to use the content on YouTube to train their own models”, according to the Commission.
Google’s introduction of its ‘AI Overview summaries has raised concerns about a possible drop in the number of visitors to websites and a fall in revenue linked to visits.
Many players in the press sector and rights holders are campaigning for Google to be obliged to give publishers, mainly media companies, the option of preventing their content from being used by and for artificial intelligence (‘opt out’).
According to a Google spokesperson, this investigation “risks stifling innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever”. All these practices, if proven, could lead the Commission to condemn Google for abuse of a dominant position. (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)