French news outlets hit out at Google over AI summaries

A federation of nearly 300 French newspapers said Tuesday that it filed a complaint with the country's competition authority over Google's new AI-generated summaries of search results, fearing the feature will erode traffic to their own websites. It is the latest salvo by media companies against the US tech giant's use of their articles and other content as they grapple with ad revenue declines. Google launched its AI Overviews in France in late July, which appear above regular links to search results and compile information from a wide array of sources. But the APIG association of newspapers wants the country's competition regulator to ensure "Google's respect of commitments made in 2022" as part of a compensation deal with French media groups. Information "has considerable value", APIG president Marc Feuillee, also managing director of the centre-right Le Figaro newspaper, said in a statement. "The editors are not seeking to halt innovation. They are asking for this value to be shared, and for compensation of the use of their content," the association said in its statement. It said Google had sprung the new artificial intelligence summaries without their consent, an alleged viola...