A group known as the Alliance of Independent Publishers has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission over Google’s AI-powered reviews, Reuters reports.
The complaint accuses Google of “misusing web content for Google AI Reviews in Google Search, which has caused and continues to cause significant harm to publishers, including news publishers, in terms of lost traffic, readership and revenue.”
It also says that unless publishers want to disappear from Google’s search results entirely, they “have no option to opt out” of having their content used in AI-powered reviews.
It’s been a little over a year since Google began adding AI-generated annotations to the top of some search results, and despite some initial responses that were shockingly false, the feature has continued to expand, to the point where it is reportedly causing significant traffic losses for news publishers.
Google told Reuters that “new AI capabilities in Search are empowering people to ask more questions, creating new opportunities for content discovery and business.” The company also said that web traffic claims are often based on incomplete data and that “sites can gain and lose traffic for a variety of reasons.”
