French press body asks competition watchdog to take action over Google AI

A French press association has asked the country's competition watchdog to take action against Google's artificial intelligence-generated article summaries, which the trade group says deprive newspapers and magazines of readers. 

 

The group has called ‌on the regulator to ​make a decision similar to ​that which ordered Meta to put forward a ​payment plan and resume talks with traditional media seeking fees for the use of their content by AI tools.

 

The Alliance of General Information Press, which represents French newspapers and ​magazines, opposes the recent rollout of AI-generated article summaries by ‌Google without consultation, the alliance said in a statement.

 

 

Google did ​not respond immediately to a request for comment. Four years ago the competition watchdog forced Alphabet's Google to pay for using French press ‌articles on its platforms, ​including its search engines.

 

Google ‌was fined €500 million ($576.8 million) after the copyright dispute.

 

"The unilateral deployment ‌of new uses of press content, without prior authorisation or ​dedicated remuneration, disregards these commitments," the alliance said, adding that the communications regulator, Arcom, has estimated ​traffic on their sites has fallen by between 33% and 38% because of AI-generated summaries.

 

"The fact that ‌AI is built upon media content means one single thing: ‌this information has considerable value," Marc Feuillee, the alliance's president, said in the statement. Publishers demand this value is shared, he added.