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Google’s AI Overviews has come under fire from Italy’s publishing trade association for allegedly stealing traffic from publications.
The Italian federation of newspaper publishers, FIEG, revealed that it had submitted a formal complaint to the Italian communications watchdog, Agcom.
“Google is becoming a traffic killer,” FIEG said in a statement.
The trade association argues that the AI overview “reduces [the publications’] visibility and discoverability, and thus their advertising revenues”.
“This has serious consequences for the economic sustainability and diversity of the media, with all the risks associated with a lack of transparency and the proliferation of disinformation in democratic debate.”
The concern is that AI Overviews, which provide a summary of information based on searches, draw traffic away from the publications they source their info from, reducing traffic and ad revenue for news publications and creators.
The FIEG also found issue with Google’s new AI Mode, which allows users to speak directly to a chatbot for information.
“[Google’s AI services] violate fundamental provisions of the Digital Services Act, with detrimental effects on Italian users, consumers and businesses,” the statement said.
The FIEG’s complaint is just one of many in the EU. The European Newspaper Publisher’s Association is coordinating the complaints in an effort to force the European Commission to investigate Google for a breach of the EU Digital Services Act.
Google’s AI push has recently benefited the company, having prevented it from having to sell its Chrome browser.
Last month, a five-year antitrust case against Google forced the company to begin sharing its AI search data with rivals.
The case, which began in 2020, was in regard to Google’s dominance as a search engine, being the default search engine on a range of products, including its own Android and Chrome devices.
While the US Department of Justice had demanded that Chrome be sold by Google, the decision instead allows Google to keep Chrome, but rules that search data must be shared and revenue-sharing agreements to make Google the default browser, such as the one it has with Apple, be limited.
Google said the ruling is a win for the company and that the development of generative AI likely influenced the ruling.
“Today’s decision recognises how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information,” Google said in a statement on Tuesday (2 September).
“This underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: competition is intense, and people can easily choose the services they want.”
US District Judge Amit Mehta acknowledged that generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Grok are used by millions, many of whom use the chatbots as a search engine.
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