Penske Media Corporation, the publisher of Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter, has become the first major American media company to sue Google over its AI summaries.
The company claims that the AI Overviews that often appear at the top of search results leave users with little reason to click through to the source, hurting traffic and illegally benefitting from the work of its reporters.
While Penske Media is the biggest name to take on Google over its AI Overviews, it’s not the first.
Online education company Chegg sued Google in February, as did a group of independent publishers in Europe.
It can either block Google from indexing its content, essentially removing itself from all search results, which would further devastate its business.
Penske Media Corporation, the publisher of The Hollywood Reporter and Rolling Stone, is the first significant American media company to file a lawsuit against Google for its artificial intelligence summaries. According to the company, the AI Overviews that frequently show up at the top of search results give users no incentive to click through to the original content, which damages traffic and unlawfully profits from the reporting of its reporters.
Though not the first, Penske Media is the most well-known company to challenge Google’s AI Overviews. In February, the online learning platform Chegg and a consortium of independent European publishers filed a lawsuit against Google. The News/Media Alliance has also voiced their opinion about the feature, referring to it as the “definition of theft” and requesting that the DOJ take action.
“With AI Overviews, people find search more helpful and use it more,” José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson, told the Wall Street Journal in defense of the summaries. According to Penske and other publishers, however, there is little incentive to click on the links that appear in search results, and as a result, their traffic and income have increased significantly. Penske asserts in the lawsuit that a decline in Google traffic is the direct cause of the more than one-third decline in affiliate link revenue this year.
Additionally, the business says it is in a difficult position. Its business could be further destroyed if it were to prevent Google from indexing its content, effectively eliminating itself from all search results. Alternatively, it could keep giving Google AI training materials, “adding fuel to a fire that threatens PMC’s [Penske Media Corporation] entire publishing business,” the Wall Street Journal reports in the complaint.
Naturally, this is just the most recent conflict between AI firms and the content producers they use. Perplexity was sued by Merriam-Webster and Encyclopedia Britannica, and News Corp was sued last year. The New York Times, the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and others have targeted Microsoft and OpenAI in the interim. Additionally, Google may find it more difficult to defend itself now that it has been compelled to acknowledge that “the open web is already in rapid decline” due to numerous antitrust complaints.
