Major publisher drags Google to US court for scraping content in AI summaries

Penske Media filed a lawsuit against Google on Friday in a Washington, D.C. federal court, accusing the tech company of using its articles from Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Variety without permission to generate AI summaries.

The legal action, according to Reuters, is the first of its kind brought by a major U.S. media house targeting Google’s AI-generated results that now appear above regular search links.

The family-run publisher, which is led by Jay Penske and claims 120 million monthly online visitors across its properties, argues that these AI summaries are pulling traffic away from its websites.

The company says Google is republishing its journalism in these overviews without a license and without any form of compensation. Penske claims this is hurting both ad and subscription revenues at a time when search traffic is already falling.

Penske links AI summaries to traffic loss and falling revenue

The lawsuit says that around 20% of searches that used to send users to Penske’s sites now show AI Overviews instead. This change, according to the company, has led to affiliate revenue dropping by over one-third by the end of 2024.

Jay said in a statement, “We have a responsibility to proactively fight for the future of digital media and preserve its integrity – all of which is threatened by Google’s current actions.”

Penske claims Google forces publishers to accept these terms if they want to be included in search results at all. Without agreeing to let their work be summarized by AI, the company says it would lose visibility.

The lawsuit also brought up the infamous 2024 federal court ruling that said Google holds a near 90% share of the U.S. search market, saying it gives Google unfair power to control how digital content is accessed and distributed.

In February, education platform Chegg also sued Google over the same issue. The company said AI Overviews were causing a drop in demand for original learning materials.

The legal complaints echo concerns from media groups who say Google’s AI is lifting content without payment, while pretending it’s offering users more helpful search experiences.

Google defends its AI; publishers say deals aren’t equal

Jose Castaneda, a spokesperson for Google, responded on Saturday by saying, “With AI Overviews, people find Search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered. We will defend against these meritless claims.”

Google insists the tool is designed to improve the user experience and help surface more content from across the internet. But that defense isn’t landing well with publishers.

Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, a trade group that represents over 2,200 U.S. publishers, told Reuters that Google is avoiding the kind of licensing deals that others in the AI world are now signing. She said:

“All of the elements being negotiated with every other AI company doesn’t apply to Google because they have the market power to not engage in those healthy practices. When you have the massive scale and market power that Google has, you are not obligated to abide by the same norms. That is the problem.”

While AI companies like OpenAI have reached licensing agreements with outlets such as News Corp, Financial Times, and The Atlantic, Google has not moved as quickly. Its AI product, Gemini, directly competes with ChatGPT, yet unlike its rival, Google hasn’t finalized similar partnerships with media companies.

Earlier this month, Google scored a legal victory in a separate antitrust case, when a judge ruled it would not be forced to sell off its Chrome browser. That decision disappointed publishers and groups like Coffey’s, who say it left them with no real way to opt out of Google’s AI summaries.

For now, Google continues to control nearly every part of the discovery pipeline, from crawling to ranking to summarizing, and Penske wants the courts to decide if that level of control has gone too far.

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