Google Is Under Investigation In The Eu To Find Out Whether It...

The European Commission has opened an antitrust investigation into Google and whether it is imposing unfair terms on content creators and web publishers to power its AI services.

The Commission's investigation focuses on two major concerns. First, the possible use of videos uploaded to YouTube being used to train generative AI models. This being done without the content creator receiving any money or being able to refuse to have their content used this way.

"Content creators uploading videos on YouTube have an obligation to grant Google permission to use their data for different purposes, including for training generative AI models," the Commission says. "Google does not remunerate YouTube content creators for their content, nor does allow them to upload their content on YouTube without allowing Google to use such data."

Secondly, the use of web publishers' content (i.e. webpages) to provide AI Overviews and AI Mode.

"The Commission will investigate to what extent the generation of AI Overviews and AI Mode by Google is based on web publishers' content without appropriate compensation for that, and without the possibility for publishers to refuse without losing access to Google Search."

If you're not familiar, AI Mode is more of a traditional chatbot interface for Google Search, while AI Overviews are the short summaries that appear at the top of a Google Search result in response to some search queries. These overviews use information provided by web publishers and content creators to offer an answer on Google's platform to the user's query. Thus, the user no longer needs to bother visiting the website that provided the information.

According to a Pew Research report, users that do not see an AI summary are almost twice as likely to visit a traditional search result link than those that do. A study by Authoritas found that websites that were ranked the highest for certain queries were losing around 79% of their traffic when an AI Overview was served on the results page.

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AI Overviews are not present on all Google searches, and in fact, most estimations put them at under 50%. Google also disputes the Authoritas study. The company has previously defended AI Overviews and suggests it has not seen a dramatic drop in aggregate web traffic as a result of their rollout.

So, the way it's shaping up, this antitrust case is going to get right back into the bit

Source: PC Gamer